A coffee palace was an often large and elaborate residential hotel that did not serve alcohol, most of which were built in Australia in the late 19th century.
A modest temperance hotel was opened in 1826 by activist Gerrit Smith in his hometown of Peterboro, New York, United States. It was not popular with locals, nor commercially successful.
Temperance hotels were first established in the UK in the 1850s to provide an alcohol-free alternative to corner pubs and residential hotels, and by the 1870s they could be found in every town and city, some quite large and elaborate. In the late 1870s the idea caught on in Australia, where the appellation "coffee palace" was almost universal, and dozens were built in the 1880s and early 1890s, including some of the largest hotels in the country. Due to the depression of the mid-1890s, some became ordinary hotels and others were converted to different uses. The name continued to be applied to smaller residential hotels and guest houses in the early 20th century, until the trend died out. As large old hotels that may never have been a financial success, many, including most of the largest, were eventually demolished.