Stairwell

The stairwell rises through Female Ward 9 & 10 of the Kirkbride Complex at Callan Park, Rozelle. Concrete treads, cracked plaster, high windows. Light enters in defined angles and tracks across walls that have not been maintained in decades. The paint has lifted and curled back in layers, exposing the colours that came before: each layer a different period in a building that operated for well over a century. The Kirkbride Complex was the product of a collaboration between three people. Colonial Architect James Barnet selected the site for its winter sun and summer breezes, and designed the ward buildings. Inspector General of the Insane Frederic Norton Manning provided the clinical rationale and the planning model, returning from a study tour of England, France, Germany and the United States in 1876 with drawings of Chartham Down Hospital in Kent. Charles Moore, Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, designed the grounds. Together they built what the NSW State Heritage Register describes as the first institution in Australia designed as a curative and therapeutic environment. Ground was broken on 11 February 1880. The first stone was laid on 22 April 1880. The first ward opened on 1 July 1884 with approximately 50 male patients. Female patients arrived on 19 December 1884. By the time the complex was reported on in June 1885, it comprised 17 sandstone freestone blocks arranged in a square, 30 buildings in total, at a construction cost of £235,539. The female wards held patients across a designed pavilion layout, two-storied throughout, with the ends of the pavilions rising to three stories. The complex was linked by a continuous covered veranda, with courtyards and airing courts between the ward blocks. Hospital functions wound down through the 1980s and 1990s. The last patient services were transferred from the Kirkbride Complex in 1994. Sydney College of the Arts occupied the buildings from 1996 before its Rozelle campus closed at the end of 2019. This photograph was made in 2019.