Toilets

Hexagonal floor tiles in black and white spread wall to wall across one of the Callan Park ward bathrooms. A cast-iron column radiator sits against cream ceramic tiles, its valve still connected to the exposed pipework that fed it. A porcelain basin hangs from the right wall. Frosted glass panels divide the shower stalls, smeared and clouded where the seal has long since gone. Two hopper windows let in a flat, grey light. A soap dispenser and a mirror cabinet remain mounted to the wall. The fittings are heavy, deliberate, and from a much earlier century. The air looks cold.

The ward bathrooms at Callan Park were built into the Kirkbride Complex when the Hospital for the Insane opened on the Rozelle foreshore in 1885. Communal facilities of this kind, with hex tile, column radiators, and porcelain hand basins, were standard in late-Victorian institutional construction. They survived the twentieth-century reorganisation of the hospital because tearing them out would have done more damage to the building than leaving them in place. The complex sits on the NSW State Heritage Register at #00818. Many of the wards still hold this kind of original built fabric, untouched since the last patient to use the room walked out and the door was locked behind them.