The Old Clare Hotel

The boardroom of Carlton & United Breweries is now the C.U.B. Suite: 106 square metres, still with its original timber panelling and parquetry, an eight-seat table for meetings or dinner, and the executive men's washroom restored for whoever is in charge tonight. Tonkin Zulaikha Greer joined the brewery building to the Clare, an Art Deco pub of curved brick with its name in rusted letters on the awning, and the pair have been one hotel since 2015. Elsewhere the restoration knew when to stop. The Connell Rooms have ceilings up to six metres high, and in one the plaster has been left patched and peeling between tall arched windows, with a red chair set in front of it, as though the decorators arrived, looked at the wall and declared it finished.

Recommended for anyone who would rather have Sydney's inner city than its harbour, and for families, since rooms connect and babysitting can be arranged. Dogs get a room category of their own. Spice Alley's hawker stalls are a couple of minutes' walk, Central Station five, and the hotel lends bikes for nothing. Both tenant restaurants have closed, so the Clare Bar feeds the house from breakfast to dinner and Kensington Street does the rest. In the Clare Suites and the two-level Chippendale Lofts there are records to borrow. The heated pool is on the roof, with a bar under a glass canopy along one side and towers standing over all of it: the new Chippendale, looking down on the old.