Flare

Female Ward 9 and 10 sits inside the Kirkbride Complex at Callan Park, Rozelle, part of a group of Victorian sandstone pavilions built between 1880 and 1884. The ward is one of five female blocks in the complex, each linked by a continuous covered veranda and arranged around landscaped courtyards. Freestone walls, high ceilings, and extensive verandah spaces were not incidental features. They were the treatment. Callan Park was designed from the beginning as a curative and therapeutic environment, the first institution in Australia built on that principle. Colonial Architect James Barnet selected the site for its winter sun and summer breezes. Inspector General of the Insane Frederic Norton Manning brought back drawings of Chartham Down Hospital in Kent after a study tour of England, France, Germany and the United States in 1876, then adapted the design for the New South Wales climate. Charles Moore, Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, designed the grounds. The result was a pavilion-type layout of small buildings with landscaped courtyards, airing courts, and views across Iron Cove to the Blue Mountains on the western horizon. Ground was broken on 11 February 1880. The first ward opened on 1 July 1884. The first female patients arrived on 19 December 1884, transferred from Gladesville. The total construction cost was £235,539. The hospital was proclaimed as a separate institution from Gladesville on 1 August 1878 and became a teaching hospital for the University of Sydney from 1885. Manning served as the first lecturer in psychological medicine at the university from 1886 to 1888, describing his ambition to end the asylum as "a cemetery for deceased intellects." The last patient services transferred from the Kirkbride Complex in 1994. Sydney College of the Arts occupied the buildings from 1996 and vacated at the end of 2019. The photograph was made that same year, as the wards stood newly empty again. Sunlight enters through the windows of Female Ward 9 and 10, illuminating dust motes and the remnants left behind: peeling paint, forgotten medical equipment, and a floor that has outlasted every purpose it was built to serve.