THE OCCIDENTAL HOTEL.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXVIII, Issue 6025, 9 October 1906, Page 5

THE OCCIDENTAL HOTEL.

The Occidental Hotel, on Lambton quay, changed hands yesterday after having been in the hands of the Moeller family for thirty years. The hotel was erected about the year 1874 by Messrs Cartel and Diamond, the lessees of the site from the Corporation. Its first tenant was Mr Coker (afterwards of Coker’s Hotel, Christchurch), and it was from that gentleman that the lease was purchased by the late Mr Phillip Moeller. Mr Moeller, who was a City Councillor, a Justice of the Peace, and generally a much-respected citizen, was Ihe son ef Baron Carl Von Moeller, officer in the German Army, and an areient faded photograph of the old baron in uniform 1 , still in the possession of the family, points to the fact t'rat he was an officer of high rank. It is three sons—Phillip Edward, and Itudolph—came out to Australia at the time of the gold-rush. Failing to locate fortune in Victoria the brothers came on to Wellington in 1866 and started in business as merchants under the form of Phillip Moeller and Co., and from this the head of the firm became licensee of the old Emnire Hotel (on the site of the present house of the same name), and when that hotel was burned in 1876 he promptly took over the Occidental, which at once became, and for many years after remained, the leading hotel in Wellington. Mr Moeller died in 1886, since which time the hotel has been managed by Mrs Moeller, with the assistance of her sous, of whom Mr Frank Moeller (of the Masonic Hotel, Napier) is the oldest. Mr Arthur Moeller has practically been manager for the last three or four years. There is only ten and a half months to run of the present lease, which was taken over yesterday bv Air Peter Hartshorn, late of the Albion Hotel, Wanganui. At the termination of that period the hotel reverts to Messrs Kirkcaldie and Stains, which firm has acquired the balance of the original lease from Mr Diamond (some five years). Before the expiration of that term 'it is anticipated that structural developments will take place that will mean the transfer of the license to another property, and the utilisation of the block for other purposes.