Corner Grenfell Street & Hindmarsh Square, looking SWGrenfell Street, 1930s
Grenfell Street runs from King William StreettoEast Terrace. It is one of the intermediate-width streets of the Adelaide grid, at 1+1⁄2chains (99 ft; 30 m) wide.
The section of the street which runs parallel to Rundle Mall (west of Hindmarsh Square) on the northern side features many retail outlets, as well as the southern entrances of many of the arcades, side-streets, and eateries of the mall. The southern side is populated mainly by office buildings, including the Grenfell Centre ("the Black Stump") at no. 25.[5]
A dedicated bus lane runs the whole length of both Grenfell and Currie Streets, limiting private vehicles to one lane for most of its length, and carrying nearly all bus traffic traversing the city in an east–west direction. At the eastern end of Grenfell, a dedicated bus track carries buses across East Terrace into the O-Bahn tunnel under Rymill Park.
Central Hall, at no. 102a Grenfell, was built by a Mrs Phillipson, of Glenelg, for the use of the Adelaide German Club (Allgemeiner Deutscher Verein) in 1894, opening in June of that year.[6] It was subsequently used for a variety of community events (many unrelated to the club), for around 20 years. Charles Cawthorne took over the lease and reopened it Queen's Hall on 7 August 1915. Its use turned to performances, mainly concerts, operas, dramas, and fundraisers for World War I, and it also hosted occasional variety shows. Its use as a theatre diminished from 1923, and by 1929 it was operating as a dance hall. The building was partially destroyed by fire on 4 November 1929, and it fell into disuse until it was refurbished and reopened in 1933 as the Embassy Ballroom, which had an Art Deco facade. In the 1950s it was converted into a cinema, first called the Plaza Theatre and renamed Paris Cinema in 1965. It was later demolished and Regent Arcade built on the site.[7][8][9]
The Producers Hotel (formerly Old Exchange Hotel, Producers Club Hotel, Woodman's Inn), at no. 233-235,[12] was built on the site of the first pub built and licensed in the East End, the Woodman, in 1839.[13][14][15] It was first licensed by John Ragless Jr, and so named because it was the first stop for timber merchants carting timber from "the Tiers" (as the Adelaide Hills were called).[16] In 1900 it was renamed the Electric Light, after the power station. It was rebuilt for the South Australian Brewing CompanyinQueen Anne style in 1906 as the Producers.[17] It was listed on the SA Heritage Register on 5 April 1984.[18] After the East End markets moved away in 1986, the hotel became the East End Exchange Hotel for a short while before being renamed the Woodman's Inn in the mid-1990s.[17][16] It became a major venue for live music of many genres,[19] under its later name, the Producer's Bar, known simply as "The Producers".[20] It also hosted Adelaide Fringe events, until its closure in 2018.[21] It was functioning mainly as a nightclub in 2022,[22] with a large knife fight reported in March of that year.[23] In 2023 it was known as Friday's Lounge.[24]
The Griffins Hotel, built 1886, on the corner of Grenfell Street and Hindmarsh Square (address 40 Hindmarsh Square), is state heritage-listed.[25]
In July 2012, dedicated bus lanes were introduced along the full length of Grenfell Street in both directions, in operation from 7am to 7pm each weekday. When operational, taxis, cyclists and emergency vehicles are also able to use the lane, but private vehicles can only travel up to 100 metres (330 ft) in the bus lane.[34][35]
In December 2016, after the O-Bahn extension tunnel was built underneath Rymill Park at the eastern end of the street, buses formerly routed along North Terrace were permanently routed along Grenfell (although they had been temporarily diverted from North Terrace via East Terrace, since construction of the Botanic Line of the Adelaide trams had begun in early October that year).[36] After this, nearly all buses travelling in an east–west direction across the city use Grenfell.[37]
^"Advertising". Southern Australian. Vol. II, no. 43. South Australia. 27 March 1839. p. 4. Retrieved 18 April 2024 – via National Library of Australia.
^City of Adelaide. "Griffins Head Hotel"(PDF). Heritage of the City of Adelaide. Retrieved 6 June 2022. The text in this Information Sheet was copied from the City of Adelaide Heritage Study, October 1990, Volume One, part of a review of the City of Adelaide Plan 1986-1991.
^"Money in hotels". The News (Adelaide). Vol. XII, no. 1, 778. South Australia. 27 March 1929. p. 13 (Home edition). Retrieved 17 April 2024 – via National Library of Australia.
