Site of the Bellevue Hotel - 30 years on

It is 30 years since the demolition of the Bellevue Hotel, probably Brisbane's most magnificent design, so I thought it would be a good idea to reflect on what I feel is Brisbane's greatest heritage loss.



The Bellevue was a Victorian filigree style hotel with twin French style mansard towers on its roof built in 1885-86. It sat gracefully in a beautiful precinct opposite the Botanic Gardens, Parliament House, the Queensland Club among rare and elegant Victorian terrace houses including The Mansions and Harris Terrace on Alice Street.

Jo Bjelke Petersen's progressive and pro-modern government bought the site and was keen to remove the old hotel to make way for office buildings. After years of fighting preservationists, the government removed the cast iron verandahs in 1974 in an act of spite before a midnight demolition by the notorious Deen Brothers on the 20th April 1979.

Sadly 30 years on and the site is nothing more than an ugly vacant windswept urban plaza to a horrible brutalist office building which adds nothing to Brisbane.


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This act of heritage vandalism spurred the preservationists to become more active which eventually led to new heritage protection laws.

The lessons of the past should not be forgotten.