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Hides Hotel
The name is a Cairns institution, with a Hides' Hotel being part of the social fabric of the city since 1885. The present building has served for eight decades as a substantial first-class, three-storey, masonry hotel. During World War II the building was taken over for use as short-term accommodation for newly-arrived or visiting Australian and US officers, and General Douglas MacArthur is said to have stayed overnight at the hotel while on a visit to Cairns.
Place information
Location
Place type
Military accommodation
History
The reinforced concrete hotel was constructed in two stages for the O'Hara family, who were well-known Cairns publicans. It was erected alongside the first Hides' Cairns Hotel and for nearly four decades the two buildings functioned together as Hides' Hotel.
The present hotel is a product of a period of intensive building activity which took place in Cairns in the 1920s associated with the expansion of the town as a port servicing new soldier-settlement farming area in the hinterland and on the Atherton Tableland. Other factors included the upgrading of Cairns to city status in 1923 and its establishment as the...
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