“The Shakespeare” Hotel - Devonshire Street - Surry Hills

The Shakespeare — “the Shakey” if you grew up anywhere near Central is the blue-tiled corner on Devonshire Street that still looks like a Victorian pub that never got the memo about open-plan fit-outs. Built in 1879, it sits at 198–200 Devonshire Street on the Steel Street corner (also facing Steel Lane), a short climb from Central and now a few metres from the Surry Hills light-rail stop that nearly killed its trade during construction.

What you notice first is the downstairs bar: Reschs-era blue tiling, a proper counter, and the habit of spilling schooners onto the footpath when the weather behaves. Upstairs, Victorian-style rooms and a later banqueting / second-bar level (revamped in living memory) keep the building working as hotel as well as pub. Dog-friendly footpath drinking is present-tense colour — fine in a sentence, not a heritage claim.

For nearly fifty years the Hargreave family held the place — Margaret Hargreave buying in stages from the mid-1970s before a 2024 freehold sale (reported around $17 million) to publican Laurence Collins. The point for this blog is continuity: same corner, same name, same job since the late 1870s, while Surry Hills flipped from working terrace suburb to brunch capital around it.