Historical information

Upper Main Street Stawell. Mining Exchange and Commercial Hotel built 1861. Photo c1880.
Hotel housed the Victoria Theatre.
Commercial Hotel built and licensed in 1861 and added to over the years.
About 1865 an assembly room/theatre was erected at the hotel, part of this was the assembly room of the Quartz Miners Hotel in Upper Main Street which had been demolished on account of the increased mining in the area. The assembly room was the only theatre at the Reefs until the Town Hall was erected. It was called the Victoria Theatre. In 1878 the Stawell paper reports that the Court of Petty Sessions had been held in the Victoria Theatre at the Commercial Hotel.
Mr Sauerbrey was the owner of the Hotel in 1869 and he advertised extensive additions of sitting-rooms, bedrooms & bathrooms. First class stabling and carriage house. Rooms for Mining Meetings and bookings for Cobb & Co.

Physical description

Commercial Hotel with first floor balcony. Eight men lined up in street and three women on balcony.
Two horse drawn buggies on right.