THE front doors give few clues as to what is behind them.
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They are solid and imposing, wearing architectural trimmings, such as the arch window crowning the frame, and shaded by a neoclassical portico.
Yet those doors actually give every indication of the kind of place behind them. For this is the entrance to the Newcastle Club.
The club has been part of Newcastle life since 1885 and has occupied its place on The Hill, on the corner of King and Newcomen streets, for almost a century.
The Newcastle Club has been an exclusive haven for the who's who of not just this city, but also those from further afield.
The institution has counted among its members local politicians, community leaders, and captains of industry. The names in the club's "Distinguished Visitors" book range from governors-general and diplomats to cricket legend Sir Donald Bradman.
The clubhouse is a stately brick structure with wide verandas across its northern face, offering views over the city and the harbour, and as far as the eye can see along Stockton Bight and to the hills beyond.
So the Newcastle Club is in a commanding position. Yet so few notice the building, let alone know what it houses. Which suits many of the members just fine.
"There's no signs, it's not that kind of club," says Ken Dutton, who has been a member since 1970.
Indeed, this is not the kind of club you can just wander into. Beyond the main entrance is another set of doors marked "Members Only". To venture past those doors, you need to be invited - and be dressed appropriately.
Dutton invites me beyond those doors. Standing in the vestibule is like being in a gleaming forest. Polished wood predominates, from the wall panels to the staircase spiralling to the top floor.
Snoozing under the staircase is a 19th-Century oak long-case clock.The hands on its face are still. It is set to a time other than the present. Which is kind of like the atmosphere, and the charm, of the Newcastle Club.
It feels like it is from, not just another time, but another place. The West End of London, perhaps.
But this is more than the Newcastle Club by name. Between its brick and wood-panelled walls, the club holds historic treasures that help tell the story of Newcastle.
The key to seeing some of those items is Dutton. As the club's honorary historian and librarian, he is the treasure keeper.
KEN Dutton is similar to the Newcastle Club itself. He is a refined gentleman with a fascinating history.
He moved from Sydney in 1969, when he was appointed the University of Newcastle's Professor of French. His passion for the French language and culture went beyond the campus. He was a long-time president of the local Alliance Francaise organisation and the Franco-Australian Cultural Association, and he has been awarded the Medal of the City of Paris.
In any language, Dutton is an impressive individual. He is a Member of the Order of Australia and has written more than 21 books. The 81-year-old has earned the right to settle into one of those plush leather lounges in the Newcastle Club and relax. Instead, he has been busy recording the character and life of the club. What's more, as honorary librarian, he has been reshaping the club.
Professor Dutton took on that role in about 2010 because he was not happy that books were all but out of sight in the club.
At that time, the library "was a little alcove with a few books, a Scrabble set, a set of old Popular Mechanics [magazines] from the 1950s, and I thought, 'This is ridiculous'.
"So I suggested we needed a popular library. And I suggested we might appoint someone as an honorary librarian. I didn't nominate myself, but they all knew who I meant!"
Dutton helped create a more suitable space for books, occupying an opened-up area on the second floor that was once two suites for visiting judges. The new position made the library lounge all but impossible to ignore: "Now you've got to pass through it to get to the bar. So people are aware that it's there. And often people will say, 'I didn't realise. I saw an interesting book in the library'. It's meeting its purpose."
The library lounge has about 2000 books. The subjects range from biography and local history to titles about the great clubs in London, including one that has a reciprocal arrangement with Newcastle, the East India Club.
Most of the books are donated by club members. Or, as Dutton calls them, "book fairies", because most leave the books anonymously.
The librarian has a couple of assistants - actually, long-time friends - to catalogue new arrivals.
One assistant is Gwen Hamilton. She has known Dutton for many years, having studied French at the university.
"He said he was making a library, and he asked me if I would help," says Hamilton, as she sits at a corner writing desk, entering into the computer the titles of a couple of recently donated books.
Hamilton had just retired from a long career as a librarian, "but I was not very good at retiring." She said, "Yes."
While she looks at the books, and across to the veranda bar with its view-filled windows, Hamilton smiles and says, "It's the cushiest librarian's job I've ever had."
Her "boss" also wears a smile of quiet satisfaction as he scans the library lounge.
"The club stands for civilised values," Dutton says. "And one of them is reading."
Asked what is his favourite book in the collection, he replies, "Oh, of course, it's a history of the Newcastle Club by a bloke called Ken Dutton."
As its historian, Dutton can tell you about how the club was formed by a group of prominent local businessmen at a meeting in the Watt Street offices of the pastoral company, Dalgety & Co, in 1885.
He can outline the string of buildings in the city where the club was housed until its home on The Hill was finally completed in 1924.
It was built on land occupied by two 19th-Century mansions, Beresford and Claremont. Beresford was demolished, but Claremont is still there, as part of the club house, and it is both renovated and venerated for being one of the few surviving Georgian buildings in Newcastle.
Professor Dutton can talk about how the club has survived through world wars, economic downturns, and an earthquake.
Yet Dutton's tour through the club's history is made all the more enlightening by walking the corridors to explore its ornament-dressed nooks and crannies.
THE words in the frosted glass of the doors announce we have stepped into the Card Room.
"Every Saturday night for many years, [members] would get together for poker," Dutton explains. "And at a particular time, they'd press that button - see the bell?" (sure enough, a button is on the wall) - and refreshments would be brought in."
We're not here to play cards but to look at a couple of historic photo albums, held in a tall, elegant bookcase, which has been in the club since it opened.
"I use this bookcase for rare volumes, and our most interesting volumes," Dutton says.
He carefully opens an album of photos capturing the Prince of Wales' (later King Edward VIII) tour of Australia in 1920. He then reaches for another album, with the words "Government Dockyard, Newcastle NSW" embossed on its worn leather cover.
"I don't know who gave it to the club, no indication," he says. "I just came across it in the safe."
These rare photos document the history of the dockyard on Walsh Island between 1913 and 1933. Just as the dockyard has long gone, so has the island, subsumed in the Kooragang industrial precinct in the post-war years.
"One brief shining moment that was part of Newcastle," Dutton says, as he pats the album cover. "Thank goodness this was preserved, and it must be preserved."
In the Card Room are artworks donated to the club, including a sketch done in France in the last days of the First World War by Arthur Streeton.
Streeton is hardly the only big-name artist in the Newcastle Club.
On the walls are works created by influential figures from Australian art.
In the main lounge is a portrait of lawyer and long-time club president A.A. Rankin, painted in 1925 by George Lambert, one of the best-known artists in Australia in the early 20th Century. Lambert entered the portrait and was a finalist in the 1925 Archibald Prize.
The painting is behind glass, and "it's good that it is, because this used to be the smoke room."
On another wall in the main lounge are a couple of landscapes of Newcastle by Margaret Olley, along with a framed paintbrush of hers.
Other views of Newcastle are scattered along the club walls. In the dining room is a painting of Nobbys by Alfred Sharp. He was one of New Zealand's best-known watercolour artists in the late 19th Century, before moving to Newcastle to stay with his brother William, who was club president.
Sharp engaged with Novocastrian life, not only joining the club, but also designing the layout for King Edward Park.
Dutton believes the club was given the Nobbys painting by Sharp himself.
"We think he didn't have enough money to pay his club fees because of the great depression of the 1890s," Dutton says. "So we think that the painting he gave the club was in lieu of fees."
The club's art collection keeps growing. It holds the annual Newcastle Club Foundation Art Prize, which is open only to local artists. The winner receives $10,000 and their artwork is acquired by the club.
"We believe in adding significant works by local artists," says the club's chief executive, Ian Baker. "Once it comes into the Newcastle Club art collection, it's likely to be on the walls for 100 years, just like many others have been on the walls for 100 years."
However, as Baker explains, the prize is about more than art. It is a subtle way of connecting with the rest of the community.
"I think the feeling among the membership in general is they'd like to think the club is seen in the community as a positive organisation," he says. "It's not about promoting elite activities."
JUST off the vestibule is a colonnaded room known as the coffee lounge.
"But it should be called the World War One memorial room," Dutton murmurs.
On one of the walls, above the fireplace, is a carved and moulded roll of honour. Resting on the mantelpiece at the foot of the honour roll is a slouch hat, donated and signed by then-chief of the Australian Defence Force, general Sir Peter Cosgrove.
The hat is flanked by small mementos of giant moments in an industrial city, including a piece of the first shell steel rolled out at the new BHP works in 1915.
Dutton points out names on the roll of honour: "There, third name from the bottom." William L'Estrange Eames.
He had served as a doctor during the First World War and died as an old man in 1956.
Dutton then tells a ghost story. The club was hosting a ghost tour a few years ago, and one customer turned up early and waited here in the coffee lounge.
When a staff member came to collect the woman, she mentioned that standing in the door just before was "a very distinguished looking gentleman, looking up at the honour board."
"So they went to start their tour, walked along [past a row of photos of the club's past presidents] and she said, 'That's him. That's the man I saw!'. General Eames."
"She'd never been to the club before, she'd never heard of the man. So make of it what you will."
KEN Dutton makes it clear the Newcastle Club doesn't want to be the ghost of another era in a rapidly changing city.
And club members are well aware that change is reshaping Newcastle.
After all, change has obscured part of the view from the club's front verandas, as apartment buildings sprout throughout the CBD.
But in other ways, the club's view has broadened, as change has walked through those "Members Only" doors.
Before 2002, women weren't admitted as members. After much debate and a survey, in which more than 90 per cent of respondents were in favour of admitting women as members, the club changed its rules. Women were admitted to full membership.
These days, women account for about 20 per cent of the club's membership. The club has more than 1000 members.
Dutton explains the club also has a view to the future, as part of the community, not as "an ivory tower, or exclusive."
It may have been founded as an elite gentlemen's club, but, over the years, "exclusivity has given way to hospitality more and more."
But part of the Newcastle Club's future is entwined with its past, and the artefacts and art it holds.
"What we are is the sum of all our pasts. And there has to be somewhere where it's registered, otherwise it just disappears."
As for being the honorary historian, taking care of the club's treasures, Dutton shrugs and replies, "I see it as a duty.
"I have this motto, 'Cherish the past, adorn the present, build for the future'. And that's part of what I'm about."
