The Dictionary of Sydney was archived in 2021.
Two storey brick hotel on the corner of George Street North and Mill Lane in the Rocks that was built in 1848 and demolished in 1908 after having been resumed by the government in 1901 after the outbreak of plague in the area. The Observatory was also built in 1848 and the pub is presumably named for it. The hotel was across the road from the North Sydney Morgue, or Dead House, and often acted as an unofficial coroner's courtroom as the morgue was small, dingy and often over-populated with decomposing corpses. Truth journalist Joseph Forde reported that ‘weeping friends can wet eye and whistle while awaiting coronial pleasure’.
