The building was designed by Brisbane architect Robin Dods to complement the hotel (as it then was) and to accommodate a number of different tenancies including the Commercial Banking Company of Sydney.

In that same year some 54 perches of ESA 71 was acquired by William Sam Sutton, licensee of the Bush and Commercial Inn at Kangaroo Point.

Sutton's hotel was one of only a dozen or so licensed premises in Brisbane at this time including one other in Fortitude Valley, Jeremiah Scanlin's the Strangers Home located diagonally opposite the Commercial Inn.

In addition to passing trade they serviced the fledgling settlement of Fortitude Valley, established in 1849 as a temporary village by some 256 immigrants privately sponsored by John Dunmore Lang, in response to the refusal of government assistance upon their arrival at Moreton Bay.

By 1851 however, the Commercial Inn was no longer licensed and Sutton was in financial trouble; his property being offered for sale by the Sheriff in execution of a judgment obtained by Brisbane businessman John Richardson.

In addition to his business interests, Richardson was the local representative in the New South Wales Legislative Council and a supporter of both John Dunmore Lang and separation.

The properties were described as "well worth the attention of all who either require a house of their own or a good investment for their money, as they will be sold fifty per cent, under what they could now be built for".

The above is a corner allotment fronting Ann Street being the main road to Breakfast Creek, Eagle Farm, German Station, Bald Hills, Sandgate, and Pine River with a frontage to Brunswick Street leading to Bowen Bridge, Kedron Brook & c. The House is an old established one, and doing a good business, and the proprietor's reason for relinquishing business is on account of ill health in his family ...[1] A new licensee was not apparently found until the following year when the license was transferred to Henry Penfold and in 1866 to Michael Daly and in the same year back to Dickens (until 1868).

In that year William Ruddle leases the hotel from the Anglican Church (officially the Corporation of the Synod of the Diocese of Brisbane) who owned in addition to the Royal George several other blocks of land on this part of Brunswick Street.

By this time a second storey had been added to the chamfered corner section; an adjoining single-storey building on Brunswick Street also formed part of the hotel site.

Queensland's longest serving Colonial Architect, his work included the Brisbane's Supreme Court (1874–79) and the General Post Office (1871–1872).

His hotel work included:[1] A contemporary report describes Stanley's additions as including taking off the roof of the present building and raising it 4 feet (1.2 m), extending the hotel further along Brunswick Street, making a large cellar underneath, and the addition of cast iron verandahs to the Ann and Brunswick Street elevations.

Such buildings (albeit the Royal George in a somewhat more modest way) reflected the optimism and bravado of the booming Queensland economy of the 1880s, a period of unprecedented economic growth when Brisbane was virtually rebuilt as a prosperous late 19th century Victorian era city, an image sustained until well after the Second World War.

By the turn of the century the Valley was established as the second major commercial district of the city supplanting South Brisbane and the Woolloongabba Fiveways.

The portion adjoining the hotel housed several commercial tenancies initially including a jeweller, a ham and beef store and a dentist.

[1] The Royal George Hotel is a three-storeyed rendered masonry structure with a corrugated iron hipped roof concealed behind a parapet.

A second bar, located at the northwest end of the Brunswick Street elevation, opens into the southern tenancy of the adjoining Ruddle's Building and onto a timber deck constructed over the footpath.

[1] The first and second floors comprise hotel rooms opening off a central corridor, with communal facilities at the rear, and a smoking lobby facing Brunswick Street.

[1] Ruddle's Building is a two-storeyed rendered masonry structure with three parallel corrugated iron hipped roof sections concealed behind a parapet.

[1] The rear of the building, constructed of rendered masonry, has single-storeyed additions containing amenities, kitchens and store areas with corrugated iron roofs.

[1] The northwest tenancy (the former Commercial Banking Company of Sydney), currently a bar/live music venue, has a non-original awning to Brunswick Street.

The arch opens to a recessed loggia with projecting curved balcony with a wrought steel balustrade, and each window has non-original glass louvres.

[1] The first floor elevation is original and comprises a central cantilevered verandah with turned timber posts and balusters, and an ogee shaped corrugated iron awning with oversized dentils to the eaves.

The verandah has a raked boarded ceiling, a central timber partition, and multi-paned French doors with fanlights and expressed architrave mouldings.

Sash windows and French doors with tall fanlights open onto the rear enclosed verandah, which has a boarded raked ceiling and face brick exterior wall.

Built just one year after a settlement was established in the area by the immigrants of the SS Fortitude, that core (including masonry load bearing walls in the basement and first floor) constitutes rare surviving early fabric which has the potential to reveal evidence of both the workings of a hotel and building practices in the mid 19th century.

Although the Royal George Hotel has been substantially altered on several occasions, the building retains sufficient elements such as masonry load bearing construction, basement, ground floor public areas, accommodation to the upper floors, and the pattern of external openings which formerly opened onto verandahs, to sufficiently demonstrate the typical characteristics of a late nineteenth century hotel.

Ruddle's Building is important in exhibiting the principal characteristics of the work of architect RS (Robin) Dods, including a considered response to climate, robust detailing, and carefully composed elevations which, with the use of architectural elements, perform an important role in consciously linking and referring to adjacent buildings to create a coherent streetscape.

Located on a prominent street corner, the Royal George Hotel and Ruddle's Building are important elements in the Fortitude Valley streetscape.

Elements such as the recessed loggia and cantilevered first floor verandah demonstrate a considered response to climate, and surviving fabric (particularly in the rear rooms) provide important evidence of the building's original robust internal detailing.