A two-storeyed reinforced concrete building, the former Empire Hotel was erected in 1926 to replace an earlier hotel of the same name. Located across the road from the wharves, the area developed during the late 1800s as the business and administrative district of Cairns, comprising mainly warehouses, shipping agents, offices and hotels. The latter catered for local wharf workers as well as travellers arriving by the coastal steamers. Little of the district’s early buildings have survived redevelopment and today only the Empire Hotel (re-named the Barrier Reef Hotel) and the former Jack and Newell warehouse remain to perpetuate the association of this part of Cairns with its waterfront origins.

The Empire Hotel was open for business by February 1927. It was one of a number of commercial buildings erected in Cairns during the inter-war period that acknowledged the suitability of reinforced concrete construction in a tropical cyclone environment. It was a plain and modest hotel and was used for accommodation mainly by business and working people. The ground floor contained a public bar, dining room and kitchen. The first floor was taken up with bedrooms and bathrooms. During World War II the RAAF occupied the hotel as officers’ accommodation from late 1942 until mid-1945. The name was changed to the Barrier Reef Hotel in May 1960.