Beck’s Imperial Hotel

Beck’s was owned by Alec Beck whose daughter Mabel was married to Alf Rasmussin. Together they ran Rasmussin’s Bakery.

Alec Beck was famous for his gun collection, some of which he would take out to the bush and shoot galahs.

Hilary Chapman (a former POW who ran the bakery for a while) used to sell Alec Beck white newspaper from the bakery for a penny that Alec Beck would shoot to check the gun pattern and then Hilary Chapman took the paper back again and reused it. At the top of Beck’s Imperial Hotel is a widow’s walk, a railed rooftop platform, often with a small enclosed cupola frequently found on 19th-century North American coastal houses. A popular romantic myth holds that the platform was used to observe vessels at sea.