Rehabilitation Hall

A rehabilitation hall at Callan Park runs through one of the Kirkbride Block wings, a long timber-floored room with high arched windows down both sides. The room has been emptied of equipment. Patches on the floor show where bench tables and exercise frames once stood. The walls are pale green to dado height with cream above, the paint flaking near the skirting where damp has worked through. A single timber bench sits along one wall. The ceiling is plain plastered with a row of pendant light fittings down the centre line, the bulbs gone. Light from the south-facing windows lays long bands across the floor.

Callan Park's rehabilitation programs were part of the wider mid-twentieth-century shift away from custodial confinement toward active treatment. The Cerebral Surgery Research Unit opened on site in 1961, the same year as the Royal Commission into the hospital's conditions. Therapy halls like this one were used for occupational therapy, group sessions, and the supervised movement and exercise programs that ran from the 1950s onwards. The hospital merged with Broughton Hall in 1976 to form Rozelle Hospital. Final closure came on 30 April 2008. Brett photographed the hall in October 2015, as Sydney College of the Arts was preparing to vacate the Kirkbride Block after nearly two decades as the heritage building group's tenant.