Curio

State Library of New South Wales
The Chevron Hotel, Kings Cross, 1970–71

The Chevron Hotel, Kings Cross, 1970–71

Silver gelatin photoprint

PXE 858/14

A4280014

International style

Construction of the Chevron Hotel began in 1959, and the hotel opened as the Chevron-Hilton in September 1960. In spite of its reputation as Sydney's first international hotel, the Chevron  was criticised  in Robin Boyd's book, The Australian Ugliness, for having six different wall treatments across its two buildings. The Chevron Hotel was demolished in 1985. It was replaced with the Nikko, which then became the Park Royal and later was rebuilt as the Ikon Apartments.


Fertile breeding ground

By Louis Nowra

"The property developer Stanley Korman, a mixture of visionary and con-man, envisaged an 800-room building of thirty-five storeys, but this was never achieved because the second part of the project stalled due to a recession ... The site for stage two remained a gigantic hole for years and provided a fertile breeding ground for mosquitoes of plague proportions."

Louis Nowra Kings Cross- a biography 2013 pg 386

Classy hotel

By Sam Everingham

"The Chevron was a classy hotel whose Silver Spade drew bejewelled, fur clad ladies to hear the great stars of the day - Englebert Humperdinck, Tom Jones, Tony Bennett or Sergio Mendes."

Sam Everingham, Madam Lash: Gretel Pinniger's Scandalous Life of Sex, Art and Bondage pg 82