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Exchange Hotel is a heritage-listed hotel at 134 - 138 Patrick Street, Laidley, Queensland, Australia. It was designed by Eaton & Bates and built in 1902. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 21 October 1992. == History == The Exchange Hotel at Laidley, a two-storeyed brick building, was constructed in 1902 for publicans Julius and Hansine Jocumsen, and replaced an earlier hotel of the same name on the site. It was erected during one of the most significant growth periods in Laidley's history, and although modest in size and scale, reflects in style and materials the confidence and optimism of a small, prosperous, turn-of-the-century country town.〔 Laidley was established in the 1850s as a transport stop along the main dray route from Brisbane and Ipswich to Toowoomba and the Darling Downs, and following the late 1850s subdivision of the Lockyer Creek floodplains, developed as the centre of a small agricultural district. A village of Laidley, located on the rise just south of the present town, was surveyed in 1858. In the mid-1860s the Southern and Western Railway was constructed about a mile to the north of the village, at which time a second survey of Laidley town blocks, this time near the proposed railway station, was undertaken in 1865. A small township developed around Laidley station during the construction of the railway, but after the gangers moved on or took up farms in the district in the late 1860s, this township consisted of little but the two-storeyed iron station building, and Laidley village to the south remained the principal town.〔 From the mid-1870s, however, the area around the Laidley railway station gradually became the focus of an expanding and increasingly prosperous agricultural district, and by the early 1890s had a population of over 600. The first Exchange Hotel, a single-storeyed timber building erected c.1876 for local farmer and storekeeper Frederick Chambers, was one of the earliest buildings in the relocated town. Chambers acquired title to the site in October 1877, and the property was retained by him, and later his wife Mary, until it was transferred to the Royal Bank of Queensland Ltd in 1895. In February 1896, title passed to Laidley storekeeper, produce merchant and publican August Giesemann, and then in early 1900 to Hansine Jocumsen, who had acquired the license in 1898.〔 From 1 December 1901, publican William Bergland, formerly a supervisor at Peter Murphy's Transcontinental Hotel in Brisbane, took out a 10 year lease of the Exchange, Laidley's oldest hotel, and paid £1,100 for the goodwill and furniture. When reporting this on 28 November 1901, the Queensland Times also commented that: "It is Mr Jocumsen's intention to erect a large brick building in the near future, the present structure being decidedly out of keeping with the increase of business".〔 At the turn of the century, the Lockyer Valley was one of the most prosperous agricultural districts in Queensland, and this prosperity was reflected in a flurry of building activity in Laidley, which saw the town nearly double in size, and many of the earlier timber structures replaced with substantial brick buildings. These included the new Exchange Hotel (1902), Nielson's new Central Hall (1902), the new Giesemann's buildings (1902), Whitehouse's Bakery (), and Wyman's new store (1906). As the principal town in the Lockyer district, Laidley was granted its own town council, distinct from Laidley Shire Council, in 1902.〔 In March-April 1902, architects Eaton & Bates, with offices in Brisbane, Rockhampton, Mount Morgan, Longreach, Clermont, Gladstone, Maryborough and Townsville, called tenders for the erection of a two-storeyed brick hotel at Laidley for Mrs Hansen (sic) Jocumsen. Eaton and Bates were experienced designers of rural hotels, including the Normanby at Rockhampton (1890s), the Great Western and Imperial hotels at Longreach (both erected 1898-99), the Royal Hotel at Maryborough (1901), and the famous Queen's Hotel at Townsville, the first two stages of which were erected 1902-04.〔 In May 1902 Mrs Jocumsen raised a £2,000 mortgage on the property, and it is likely that this financed the construction of the new Exchange Hotel. The building was close to completion by late September 1902, and was finished by late November that year, when Bergland re-negotiated his lease on the new building.〔 When completed, the Royal Bank of Queensland, which had opened a Laidley branch north of the railway line , occupied premises on the ground floor of the new hotel. The Royal Bank had been established in Brisbane in 1885 as a competitor to the enormously successful Queensland National Bank, and was the second bank to open an office in Laidley, the first being the QNB on 16 July 1886. These were still the only banking institutions in Laidley in 1902 when the new Exchange Hotel was erected. The branch office in the Exchange Hotel became an office of the Bank of Queensland following the merger of the Royal Bank and the Bank of North Queensland (established in Townsville in 1888) in 1917. In 1922, the Bank of Queensland was taken over by the National Bank of Australasia, and the Exchange Hotel office again changed name. The National Bank maintained its Laidley branch office in this building until 1956.〔 Between 1904 and 1924 the hotel was owned by the Giesemann family, who let the business to a number of lessees. In August 1924, the property was transferred to James King of Laidley, who bought the Exchange following the destruction by fire of his own Laidley hotel, the Empire, that year. The Empire was almost opposite the Exchange, and the latter received some fire damage to the front facade. Until 1950, the Exchange remained the property of the King family, who also ran the hotel until 1949, but there have been a number of owners and even more lessees since.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Exchange Hotel, Laidley」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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