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Grand Hotel (Healesville)

Location 270 Maroondah Highway (Green Street cnr), Healesville VIC 3777 - Property No 40888 File Number 276 Level Included in Heritage Overlay

[1/1] Healesville Grand Hotel

Statement of Significance

One of the region's largest and most elaborate hotels designed by the famous architect, William Pitt, who designed many notable buildings in Melbourne, including the Rialto. The Grand Hotel is historically significant in its ability to demonstrate the increasing populartiy in walking and Field Naturalist Clubs, and the pursuit of "healthy" leisure activities, which occurred at the end of the nineteenth century and resulted in the demand for accommodation in establishments such as the Grand. (NT, 6355)

The Grand Hotel is also historically significant in its ability to indicate the changing fashions and demands of those seeking leisure activities in locations such as Healsville, and also the decline in the need for accommodation beacause of the easier forms of access to the area available by the improvement of roads and the introduction of the motor car and coach. The replacement of the original central first floor and ground floor loggias, and the "modernisation" of the hotel with the addition of a verandah in the 1930s, is illustrative of the desire at the time to attract clientele to more modern establishments. (NT, 6355)