Building Details - Architects of South Australia

However by far the best-known work of Conrad is The Austral Stores, later known as West’s Coffee Palace, Hindley Street, Adelaide (1903) featuring stuccoed dressings, red brick and terracotta tiles. This building was designed for Conrad’s father’s business which had been trading in Hindley Street since 1869. The Austral Stores provided space for twelve shops and dwellings, including bakers, a tailor, a cabinetmaker and his father’s butchery with yards at the rear of the building. The style was described at the time as ‘a conventional rendering of Byzantine architecture, with a scheme of decoration [based] on examples of characteristic Eastern forms’ (The Austral Stores, 11 April 1903).

See also Marsden, S, Sumerling, P and Stark, P (1990) Heritage of the City of Adelaide, Corporation of the City of Adelaide, Adelaide. pp92-93.