Chick’s Hotel was built in 1876 by former Port Chalmers mayor Henry ‘Harry’ Dench, on the site of his Jerusalem Coffee and Chop House and Billiard Saloon, which he opened in 1864. The hotel has historic and architectural significance.

Kōpūtai/Port Chalmers is the main port of Ōtepoti/Dunedin. During the 1879 Smith-Nairn Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Ngāi Tahu land claims, Ngāi Tahu kaumātua recorded Kōpūtai (Port Chalmers) as a kāinga nohoanga, urupā, and wāhi tapu. Nearby there is the Koputai Native Reserve which was set aside for Ngāi Tahu as part of the Otago Purchase in 1844.

The hotel was built as a three-storey building of blue stone and brick, with a flat roof with the plan designed by owner Henry Dench. The Otago Daily Times advertised for the new hotel on 26 December 1877. It contained 22 rooms and was ‘furnished in the very best and most comfortable manner’, with a large cellar and winding staircases. The hotel had boats for the use of the boarders and gardens well stocked with fruit and flowers, and the bathrooms supplied hot and cold, fresh and salt water. The new hotel was called the Jerusalem Hotel but known at first by locals as ‘Dench’s Hotel’. However, Dench hit financial problems in 1878 and was forced to sell the business. Local carrier George Chick bought the hotel in 1879, and it was known as Chick’s ever since.

Mr Chick had arrived in Port Chalmers from England on the Challenger in 1870, and married Ellen Warry in 1871 in Dunedin. Tragedy struck when Mr Chick, on a voyage back from Australia, drowned after the ill-fated Wairarapa sank on 28 October 1894. After Mr Chick’s untimely death, his widow Ellen, son William and daughter Edith ran the hotel until 1921. The Chicks then leased the hotel to Benjamin Newman and in 1938 sold it to three sisters – Misses Kathleen, Margaret and Julia Hannon. The Hannon sisters ran the hotel, marking the end of the Chick family connection.

Chick’s was the first hotel sailors saw when they arrived at the wharf. Sailors stayed on Port for weeks, with ships often holding 60-70 crew members. Port Chalmers historian Ian Church says time has entangled fact and fiction about the hotel. Stories about shanghaiing in the hotel dungeons and prisoners chained in the tunnels below are still told. In 1903, the Port Chalmers electorate went ‘dry’ and Chick’s lost its licence until May 1905.

The hotel was showing signs of disrepair by the early 1950s. In July 1952, the Licensing Control Commission reported on the state of the hotel which ‘was in very poor order inside, one floor being completely disused and certain amenities in the remainder of the premises were below the standard expected by the commission in licensed premises’. When the building was modernised in the 1950s the third level, which contained 26 bedrooms, was not serviced by an internal stairway. The hotel and port had a brief revival in 1971, with the construction of the Port Otago container ship facilities. The hotel’s reputation was further marred by a double murder in 1976 in one of the rooms. The hotel closed permanently in 2006.

In 2008, Chick’s was revived by Hector Hazard, along with the help of supportive locals, and it held music gigs. Mike McLeod, Tom Bell, Morgan Oliver, and Jake Langley took over Chick’s from Hazard in 2012 and set out to run a venue that prioritised musicians. Chick’s regularly hosted local and international bands during this time. Tom Bell, who is also a studio engineer, transformed the hotel into a recording studio in 2017. This Port Chalmers Recording Service closed and moved location within Port Chalmers in 2024.