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Ocean Beach Hotel
now at 140 Marine Parade Cottesloe, corner of Eric Street
Designed by Louis Bowser Cumpston and commanding superb sea views, the Ocean Beach Hotel on the corner of Eric Street and Swanbourne Terrace was completed in 1907 for the Swanbourne Syndicate at the cost of £6,000. It was officially opened before a crowd of three hundred on Friday, January 3rd, 1908.
Formerly a prepossessing building, the Ocean Beach Hotel was for many years North Cottesloe’s most outstanding building. Over recent years it has been provided with various new facades, the most memorable being in the forties when the stark, white exterior joined the Cottesloe pines to become a landmark for ocean travellers.
Increased popularity of the Eric Street Pool turned the Ocean Beach Hotel into a modern halfway-house and for many Perth couples it was a favourite ‘honeymoon’ haunt. During World War Two, the hotel was seconded as a U.S. Submariners Recreation Leave Base and many a wartime romance began there, when a smartly uniformed American caught the eye of one of the many tanned bathing beauties who sunbaked on the lawns or beach below.
References and Links
James, Ruth Marchant 1977, Heritage of Pines: A History of Cottesloe, Town of Cottesloe Council: 92.
This page incorporates material from Garry Gillard's Freotopia website, that he started in 2014 and the contents of which he donated to Wikimedia Australia in 2024. The content was originally created on 9 May, 2019 and hosted at freotopia.org/hotels/obh.html (it was last updated on 29 November, 2023), and has been edited since it was imported here (see page history). The donated data is also preserved in the Internet Archive's collection.