FORMER ARCADE STREET ARCHAEOLOGICAL SITE

Arcade Street is a former laneway to the rear of the Adelphi Hotel which is likely to be Ballarat’s red-light district. The laneway was filled with brothels and shanty houses where many of the residents were charged with vagrancy, stealing or drunkenness. The site is first mapped as Allotment 31, 32, 33, 35, 36 and 37 of Section Q on the 1857 Revised Town Plan of Main Street and the right-of-way is likely between 33 and 35 of Section Q extending towards Esmond [now York] Street.  Arcade street was never recognised as a formal right-of-way but premisses were valued in the 1860s. The street was likely becoming Larter Street in the 1880s, however sex workers and the Chinese were still known to frequent the area. The site was likely developed as a residential commercial premises throughout the nineteenth century. The Ballarat DEM predicts approximately -1m-+2m of fill across the site.

The site is of archaeological of local historical significance. 

The site is of historical significance as the location of an early hotel during the years of the Victorian gold rush. The site is significant as a women run business, in addition to being a hotel ran by Chinese people in the nineteenth century. The later nineteenth century shows the development and likely expansion of the commercial and residential use of the site. The site is of archaeological significance due to its potential to contain artefacts, deposits and features that relate to the establishment of commercial operations and the exchange hotel in the gold rush, and later 19th-century activities.