Bathroom Wall

The bathroom wall in Female Ward 9 and 10 at Callan Park holds what the rest of the building cannot easily show: every layer of maintenance applied and then abandoned, one coat of paint peeling back to reveal another beneath it, the sequence running down to bare plaster in places. A cold ceramic fixture remains bolted to the surface, the kind of fitting that outlasts everything around it. Moisture has worked its way through the wall for years, lifting the paint in irregular patches and leaving the surface stained in long vertical runs. The ward sits within the Kirkbride Complex, the sandstone pavilion group at the heart of Callan Park in Rozelle. Ground was broken on 11 February 1880 and the first stone laid on 22 April 1880. The first ward opened on 1 July 1884, with the first female patients transferred on 19 December 1884. By the time the complex reached completion, it comprised 17 freestone blocks arranged across 10 acres, with 30 buildings, 170 single rooms, and 41 dormitories, at a total construction cost of £235,539. The complex was a collaboration between three designers: Colonial Architect James Barnet, who selected the site for its winter sun and summer breezes; Inspector General of the Insane Frederic Norton Manning, who returned from a 1876 study tour of England, France, Germany and the United States with drawings of Chartham Down Hospital in Kent as the planning model; and Charles Moore, Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, who designed the grounds and landscape as a therapeutic environment in their own right. The result was Australia's first purpose-built hospital for moral therapy. The complex was designed for approximately 666 patients. By 1930, it held 1,500. The hospital merged with the adjoining Broughton Hall Psychiatric Clinic to form Rozelle Hospital on 1 September 1976, and closed fully on 30 April 2008. The Kirkbride Complex was occupied by the Sydney College of the Arts from 1996 until the end of 2019. This photograph was made in 2019.