Geraldine Hotel

Proudly occupying the corner of Talbot and Wilson for over a century, the Geraldine Hotel is a stone replica of the original, (named the Crown) which burned down in 1906.

The Crown was described in the Cyclopaedia of New Zealand at the turn of the Century; "It is situated in the heart of the town and contains on the ground floor a bar, billiard room, four sitting rooms, commercial room, dining room which will seat about sixty guests, a kitchen, scullery, etc. There are bedrooms upstairs to accommodate twenty-four persons. At the rear of the premises there are stables with twenty-one stalls and four loose boxes. The best of everything is kept, five servants are employed, and the domestic management is in the capable hands of Mrs Farrell."

Apart from the change in building materials, and the addition of an upstairs balcony and a lot of stone decoration, the shape of the new hotel mimiced the old, including the diagonal corner.

Geraldine was a 'dry' district from 1908 to 1950, so no alcohol was served here during that time. The bar is well and truly up and running now, as is the restaurant, named Totara. This name could well be a nod to the district's earliest Pakeha resident, Samuel Hewlings and his wife Nga Hei, who planted a large Totara tree in the Talbot street area when they settled here in 1854.

BOOK YOUR STAY IN THE HISTORIC GERALDINE HERITAGE HOTEL

Image Credits: Booking.com and Te Papa Looking down Talbot Street, 07 April 1905, Geraldine, by Muir & Moodie studio.