The Old Clare Hotel

The Old Clare Hotel opened in September 2015 in Chippendale, joining the County Clare pub and the former Carlton & United Breweries administration building. It has 62 rooms and suites, three restaurants, a ground-level bar and a rooftop pool with its own bar. Tonkin Zulaikha Greer Architects designed the conversion, valued at AUD 22 million.

The place

The hotel is at 1 Kensington Street in Chippendale, on the edge of the CBD, near Central Station and the University of Technology Sydney. It anchors the Kensington Street dining strip, which grew out of the old Carlton & United Breweries site.

The concept

Two buildings of different ages form the hotel. At the front is the County Clare Hotel, a 1940s corner pub designed by Sidney Warden, which now holds reception, the bar, a restaurant and conference rooms. Behind it stands the Carlton & United Breweries administration building, whose repetitive floor plan suited guest rooms. The laneway between them is enclosed and works as the hotel's foyer.

A public stair winds around a visible lift shaft and links that foyer to the rooftop pool. Each room has bespoke steel and timber joinery holding the wardrobe, desk, suitcase shelf, bar fridge and storage.

The client, Singapore-based hotelier Loh Lik Peng of the Unlisted Collection, supplied the mid-20th-century furniture, which he collected over about ten years, and some of the large lights in public areas. Pendants in the rooms and the light installation on the lift shaft are by PSLAB, and the bedside lamps are by The Rag and Bone Man. The old brewery boardroom survives as a suite, with its timber panelling and chandeliers.

The group now trades as Ode Hotels.

Dining & wellness

Three restaurants operate on site: Automata, Silvereye and Jason Atherton's Kensington Street Social. A ground-level bar, the Clare Bar, draws on the building's pub past. The rooftop pool has its own bar and looks over the Chippendale rooftops.