The Hall

The corridor runs the length of the frame, doorways spaced at regular intervals along one side. Painted plaster has lifted from the concrete walls and fallen in pieces across the floor, leaving the surface beneath exposed in broad, irregular patches. Light enters through each open doorway in turn and fades toward the far end of the passage, the last door barely visible. Paint chips and debris cover the floor from wall to wall. This is the Kirkbride Complex at Callan Park, Rozelle. Ground was broken on 11 February 1880 and the first ward opened on 1 July 1884, with the full complex completed by 1885 at a total construction cost of £235,539. The buildings were the result of a collaboration between three people: Colonial Architect James Barnet, who selected the Iron Cove foreshore site for its winter sun and summer breezes; Inspector General of the Insane Frederic Norton Manning, who returned from a study tour of England, France, Germany and the United States in 1876 carrying 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 space in their own right. The Kirkbride Complex was Australia's first purpose-built hospital for moral therapy treatment. Seventeen sandstone blocks arranged around landscaped courtyards, linked by a continuous covered veranda, with ten ward blocks divided equally between male and female patients. The NSW State Heritage Register statement of significance describes the complex as having exceptional significance and confirms it as the first institution of its kind designed as a curative and therapeutic environment. By 1930 the hospital held around 1,500 patients against a designed capacity of 766. A sequence of public inquiries followed. Last patient services left the Kirkbride Complex in 1994. Sydney College of the Arts occupied the buildings from 1996 under a 99-year lease, and vacated at the end of 2019. The photograph was made that same year. The corridor records what the buildings held when no one was using them anymore.