Adelaide Club Building

The Adelaide Club building is in the Italian Regency style, with a three arched Porch perhaps a later addition. The first work done in 1863—the year of the foundation of the Adelaide Club—was the excavation of the basement and the digging of a well; the contractors for this were English & Brown. The building, which is of Dry Creek stone with brick quoins and window-surrounds, was finished by December 1864, the architect being E. A. Hamilton and the builder William Lines. The total cost was 7,305 pounds. There were large additions to the rear of the building in 1891. The only alterations since have been made to the north front have been the reduction in length of the balcony, which originally extended across it, and the painting of the brick work. The Club has been continuously resident in this building since then.

Members of the Adelaide Club, a gentleman’s association established by the City’s mid-nineteenth century mercantile and pastoral elite, played an important role in the social, political and economic life of the City and the State. An earlier attempt to form such an association- the South Australian Club- did not survive the economic hardships of the 1840s.