Along the Wall

A long corridor runs the full length of one of the Kirkbride wards at Callan Park, the camera positioned at one end and looking down toward a single distant window. The corridor is wide enough for two trolleys to pass. The walls are plastered, painted a pale institutional green, with timber dado rails at chair-back height. The floor is composite tile, polished and worn. Doorways open off both sides at regular intervals, leading to individual ward rooms. The light at the far end is the only direct sunlight in the corridor.

The Kirkbride Plan was a nineteenth-century design philosophy for psychiatric hospitals, developed by American physician Thomas Kirkbride. The plan called for long ward blocks arranged radially from a central administration building, each ward block separated by gardens and connected by long corridors. The design was meant to maximise sunlight and ventilation for each patient's room while keeping wards organised by classification. Callan Park's main hospital block, built in the 1880s, is one of the most complete Kirkbride-style buildings still standing in Australia. The corridor in this photograph is part of the original Kirkbride layout. The wall colours have changed; the geometry has not.