Beehive Corner

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Beehive Corner is arguably the most popular and well-recognised buildings in Adelaide. Its distinctive corner turret, showing the year of construction, is in the shape of a beehive. On top sits a lone gold bee.

A drapery shop known as the Beehive opened in the first building on the site on 3 October 1849. By that time, the corner was widely known as Beehive Corner. Architect Edmund Wright also occupied the building for some time. Later it became the office the Adelaide Times newspaper.

This building was constructed on the site between 1895 and 1896. Architects George Klewitz Soward and Thomas English designed it for the owner, Henry Martin. Martin also had the firm design the buildings attached to the Tavistock Hotel on Rundle Street. Martin never actually saw Beehive Corner or South Australia for himself - he had his affairs managed by agents based in the colony.

The Beehive Corner building draws on the Gothic Revival style, but reinterprets it. It has an unusual amount of detail, as shown by the corner turret.