Melbourne hotels and live music venues: Who owns our renowned pubs from Young & Jackson to The Espy
Musician, singer and songwriter G Flip performed at St Kilda’s Esplanade Hotel, aka The Espy, in 2024. Picture: Nicki Connolly.
Celebrities including singer Cindy Lauper, actor Bill Hunter and even 1920s-era gangster Squizzy Taylor are among the stars who have enjoyed a drink at one of Melbourne’s most-iconic pubs, Young & Jackson.
Some of the watering hole’s other visitors are believed to include supernatural entities, with some unexplained phenomena occurring at the licensed premises on the corner of Swanston and Flinders streets.
A taproom named The Princes Bridge Hotel opened at the site in 1861 and was renamed Young & Jackson 14-years later.
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Several women were murdered near the hotel in the 19th century.
One of these women is thought to be a ghost known as the “slit throat lady” who some Young & Jackson patrons have seen outside the hotel, sometimes leaning against a post while dressed in period clothing.
Although her real name remains lost to history, it is suspected she may have crossed paths with Frederick Deeming, who murdered his wife Marie and their four children in England before immigrating to Australia.
The future Young & Jackson hotel site was purchased by John Batman, one of Melbourne’s founders, in 1837. Batman built a home for his children, which was later demolished. A hotel opened on the city block in 1861. Picture: Ian Currie.
An architectural dig discovered artefacts, including a 1900s-manufactured torpedo bottle held by excavation director Meg Goulding, behind Young and Jackson in 2018. The Victorian government is now building part of the future Metro tunnel on the site. Picture: David Caird.
He murdered his second wife, Emily Mather, and buried her body beneath the hearthstone of a Windsor cottage, in Melbourne’s inner south, in 1892.
British police suspected that Deeming might have been the infamous Jack the Ripper serial killer, as he was thought to have been in London’s Whitechapel district in 1888 – a year when five women were murdered in the area by an unidentified killer believed to the Ripper.
Deeming was hung at the Old Melbourne Gaol in 1892.
Singer Cindy Lauper is among the famous patrons to have graced Young & Jackson’s bar, according to a hotel spokesperson. Picture: Brett Faulkner.
In 1892, Frederick Deeming was hung at the Old Melbourne Gaol after being convicted of murdering his second wife, Emily Mather. He is thought to have possibly killed the “slit throat lady” ghost seen outside Young & Jackson.
A Young & Jackson spokesperson said staff have reported stories of mysterious footsteps in the foyer and a woman brushing past them on the upstairs landing, possibly a maid from the turn of the century who is believed to haunt the venue.
However, ghosts are not the only reason that the Victorian Heritage Register-listed hotel is famous.
It’s well-known as the home of an artwork named Chloe, painted by French artist Jules Joseph Lefebvre in 1875, and nowadays valued at about $5m.
Acquired by one of Y&J’s owners in the early 1900s, the painting depicts a nude young women.
The original model’s identity has long been speculated about but remains unknown to this day.
The painting Chloe, by artist Jules Lefebvre, hangs at the Young & Jackson hotel. It depicts the fictional nymph from the poem Mnasyle et Chloe, by the 18th-century French poet André Chénier, but the real-life model’s name is a mystery.
According to Young & Jackson’s heritage listing, it is historically significant as one of Melbourne’s oldest, most important and successful 19th century hotels.
Young & Jackson’s spokesperson said the hotel still retained much of its historic ambience.
“We still have pressed tin and plaster ceilings, original exterior tiles and some remaining stained glass in the windows,” they said.
“The amazing fireplace in Chloe’s bar was rediscovered during the 2000 renovation but obviously our most significant original is Chloe, the queen of the bar room wall who had been hanging on the wall of Y&J since 1909 and still attracts people from near and far everyday.”
Young & Jackson is owned by the Australian retail drinks and hospitality business Endeavour Group.
The company’s website states that it has a network of more than 1675 stores, including the Dan Murphy’s and BWS brands, and 344 hotels.
Patrons playing a game of two up at Young & Jackson on Anzac Day.
The Mitre Tavern, one of Melbourne’s oldest hotels, photographed in 1975.
Records show another historic and haunted hotel in Melbourne’s CBD, the Mitre Tavern in Bank Place, sold for $6.25m in 2012.
At the time, Point Trading Group’s owner and chief executive Avner Klein purchased the Mitre, one of the city’s earliest pubs.
The Victorian Heritage register mentions that the two-storey, cement-rendered brick building with a bluestone base likely dates to before 1850 but the tavern itself was established in the 1860s.
Inside the Mitre Tavern, where Henry Thompson became the first publican in the 1860s. He later went on to run The Railway Hotel, at the corner Flinders and Elizabeth streets.
Actor Connie Waugh, whose ghost is said to haunt the Mitre Tavern. News articles from the early 1900s reported that she was the mistress of Sir Rupert Clarke, with the pair seen together at the races, cafes and theatres in Melbourne.
A spectre in a white dress that has been seen inside the tavern is believed to be actor Connie Waugh, a mistress to the wealthy businessman Sir Rupert Clarke.
Mr Clarke, from the family who previously owned Sunbury’s Rupertswood mansion, was Australia’s first baronet who served as a Victorian MP between 1897 and 1904.
In 1909, newspaper articles reported that Mr Clarke’s wife, Amy, petitioned to divorce her husband on the grounds of his adultery with Connie Waugh.
And although reports differ, Ms Waugh is believed to have hanged herself in the tavern years later – although there is little evidence available today to substantiate the story.
Folklore suggests the Mitre 10 hardware chain’s name came from the Mitre Tavern, when two founding members were drinking together at the hotel.
The tavern was a popular gathering place for artists in the early 20th century,
In Swanston St, a venue with a colourful past is the art nouveau-style, seven-storey Curtin House which opened in the 1920s.
It has previously served as a gentleman’s club, adult cinema and the Communist Party’s Victorian branch headquarters.
In 1940, their office was raided by police after the Australian government decided to ban the party.
These days, Curtin House is home to bars, restaurants, shops and an architecture firm.
Owner Tim Peach established a rooftop bar and the Mexican restaurant Mesa Verde within the building.
The Tote in Johnston St, Collingwood.
Bands including The White Stripes, Hoodoo Gurus, You Am I, Spiderbait, Silverchair and Magic Dirt have played at The Tote.
Another noted Melbourne eatery and bar, Naked for Satan on Brunswick St, Fitzroy, belongs to Max and Pat Fink, along with their friend and business partner Eddie Crupi.
They are known for founding some of the city’s most well-known venues, which they have since sold, such as Lucky Coq in Windsor, plus Bimbo Deluxe (now named Kewpie) and the Provincial Hotel in Fitzroy.
Another inner northern suburbs hotel, dubbed Melbourne’s home of rock, is The Tote in Collingwood.
It has hosted acts including Jet, Silverchair, Paul Kelly, The White Stripes, You Am I, The Troggs and the Hoodoo Gurus.
In 2023, after the hotel was put up for sale, a crowd-funding campaign assisted Melbourne’s Last Chance Rock & Roll Bar owners, Shane Hilton and Leanne Chance, to buy The Tote for $6,315,200, ensuring that it would remain a live music venue.
After the crowd-funding campaign raised more than $3m, Mr Hilton started tattooing donors’ names onto his body to express his appreciation.
Music artists Archie Roach, Emma Donovan, Blake Scott, Ella Hooper and Richard Clapton in the television show RocKwiz’s. The show was mostly filmed at The Espy in St Kilda. Picture: Supplied/SBS.
Paul Kelly’s Always Live show at The Espy, in 2024. Picture: Tony Gough.
On the other side of town, in Melbourne’s inner south, is the famed hotel and live music venue The Esplanade Hotel.
Nicknamed The Espy, it is well known to viewers of the music trivia television program RocKwiz.
The St Kilda hotel has served as a filming location for several seasons of the show, hosted by presenter, actor and comedian Julia Zemiro and writer, comedian and producer Brian Nankervis.
The Espy was built in 1878 and last sold for $64m in 2022.
Its owners are the Cohen family, who founded the vacuum cleaning empire Godfrey’s and sold the business for $300m in 2006.
The Cohens also own the circa-1890s The Block Arcade in Melbourne’s CBD.
The Corner Hotel, on Swan St in Richmond. Picture: Tony Gough.
In 1982, singer Joan Jett got a motorbike escort from Melbourne Airport to her Melbourne hotel. She is one of the many rock stars to have performed at the Corner Hotel.
Dating even further back, to 1871, is Richmond’s Corner Hotel that began hosting jazz music shows in the 1940s.
Singers including Mick Jagger, Jimmy Barnes, Amy Shark, Joan Jett, Lorde, Vance Joy and Xavier Rudd have performed at the Corner Hotel, along with bands such as the Screaming Jets, the Masters Apprentices, the Living End, Crowded House, Pink Floyd and Midnight Oil.
In 2006, Irish rock band U2 filmed a music video at the Corner Hotel, while Jack White from the White Stripes came up with the duo’s signature Seven Nation Army riff during a sound check at the venue.
Owners Tim Northeast and Mathew Everett are involved with another music venue, the Northcote Social Club.
Dane Swan is a co-owner of The Albion in South Melbourne. Picture: Jason Edwards.
Melbourne captain Max Gawn is a co-owner of the Motor restaurant in Hawthorn, along with Craig Taite, Richard Donovan and Matt Jones,
Plenty of sports identities are part of Melbourne’s hospitality scene too.
Former Collingwood player Dane Swan is a part-owner in the Union Hotel on Chapel St, The Albion in South Melbourne and The Osborne in South Yarra.
Melbourne’s captain and six-time All Australian Maz Gawn, along with ex-Demon Matt Jones and hospitality identities Craig Tate and Richard Donovan, opened the Hawthorn restaurant Motor in 2022.
In 2019, Tate, Donovan and Gawn launched a wine bar, East End in Hawthorn East.
In the western suburbs, former Footscray footballer Paul Dimattina operates Lamaro’s Hotel.
Before becoming a publican, Mr Dimattina played 131 games for the Footscray Football Club between 1995 and 2003.
His family’s hospitality group has run other venues across Melbourne, including Southgate’s Blue Train cafe.
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