Carlton Hotel is significant historically as one of the small number of hotels built in the Capital City Zone in the inter-war period, as a community gathering place since the 1930s, and as a design by hotel specialist Sydney Smith Ogg and Serpell who had created a large number of significant hotel buildings within the City and inner suburban Melbourne. Aesthetically it is a well preserved example (upper-level ) of the minority inter-war Moderne style in the City,