The Pier Hotel
The Royal Pier Hotel was built soon after the original pier to serve the increasing trade and passenger traffic attracted by the new pier. It stood on Pier Street opposite the bottom of Union Street for a hundred years, becoming a well-known local landmark, until disaster struck.
Its position across the end of the steep final section of Union Street created a difficult 90-degree turn for drivers. In 1930 a bus descending Union Street took the turn into Pier Street too fast and overturned, killing several passengers and pedestrians, and damaging the south front of the Pier Hotel. At the inquest the Pier Hotel was found to be a driving hazard, and instead of being repaired it was ordered to be demolished. By 1931 the Pier Hotel and the entire range of buildings back to the end of St. Thomas's Street had been removed, and Pier Street itself ceased to exist, becoming part of The Esplanade.
Read more about this topic: Ryde Pier
Famous quotes containing the words pier and/or hotel:
“Duccio came not by usura
nor Pier della Francesca; Zuan Bellin’ not by usura
nor was ‘La Calunnia’ painted.
Came not by usura Angelico; came not Ambrogio Praedis,
Came no church of cut stone signed: Adamo me fecit.”
—Ezra Pound (1885–1972)
“...what a thing it is to lie there all day in the fine breeze, with the pine needles dropping on one, only to return to the hotel at night so hungry that the dinner, however homely, is a fete, and the menu finer reading than the best poetry in the world! Yet we are to leave all this for the glare and blaze of Nice and Monte Carlo; which is proof enough that one cannot become really acclimated to happiness.”
—Willa Cather (1876–1947)