Motor Club Hotel

The Motor Club Hotel at 38-56 High Street, Cranbourne, constructed c.1925, is significant.

The non-original alterations and additions, including the verandah and later additions are not significant.

The Motor Club Hotel is of local historic and aesthetic significance to the City of Casey.

The Motor Club Hotel is of historical significance for its association with the development and consolidation of Cranbourne in the Interwar period, as demonstrated by the construction of the current substantial hotel building, replacing the previous modest single storey nineteenth century premises. The hotel is of further historical interest for the early association with the automobile industry, evident in the place name, and is believed to be associated with the earliest consideration of a motoring club, which later became the Royal Automobile Club of Victoria. It is of further historical significance as the site of a hotel from 1860, and for the role it has played in the Cranbourne community, providing a home for the municipal meetings, various local community and sporting groups and also long-term accommodation for local workers such as bank clerks and schoolteachers during the 1930s and 1940s. (Criterion A)

The Motor Club Hotel is of associative significance for it close and enduring connection to the Kelly Family, who have owned the hotel site since 1925, constructed the current hotel c.1925, and held a continuous licence over four generations. (Criterion H)

The hotel is of aesthetic significance as one of the more architecturally sophisticated early hotels within the municipality. A building of its time, it demonstrates elements of Edwardian Freestyle, which was still popular for commercial buildings in the 1920s, with a varied use of parapets and exposed eaves, contrasting materials (render and face brick) and ox-bow arches to the central parapet. (Criterion E)