Toilets and Washbasin

A washroom inside the Kirkbride Complex at Callan Park, Rozelle, photographed in 2015. Hexagonal floor tiles, many lifted or stained beyond recovery, cover the floor beneath a white ceramic sink. The U-bend plumbing beneath it is fully exposed, the trap long since dry. A grimy mirror hangs above. To the left, a cast-iron radiator with visible pipework occupies the wall between door and window. Two tall timber-framed windows draw light across light green wall tiles, picking out the grime settled into the grout. A small plastic cup sits on the sill, the last thing anyone left here. The Kirkbride Complex was built from 1880. Ground was broken on 11 February 1880, the first stone laid on 22 April 1880, and the first ward opened on 1 July 1884. The total construction cost was £235,539. Callan Park Hospital for the Insane was proclaimed a separate institution on 1 August 1878, and its Kirkbride Block was designed as Australia's first purpose-built hospital for moral therapy treatment, a medical idea that light, air, distributed pavilions and a considered landscape were the treatment itself, not merely its setting. The design was a collaboration between Colonial Architect James Barnet, Inspector General of the Insane Frederic Norton Manning, and Charles Moore, Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, who was responsible for the grounds. Manning had toured England, France, Germany and the United States in 1876, returning with drawings of Chartham Down Hospital in Canterbury as the planning model, adapted for the New South Wales climate with extensive verandah spaces. Hospital functions wound down through the 1980s and 1990s. The full closure came on 30 April 2008, with remaining staff and patients transferred to Concord Hospital. Sydney College of the Arts occupied the Kirkbride Complex from 1996 until the end of 2019. The Kirkbride Complex has been gated since the school vacated, and these wards were reportedly never part of the adaptive reuse programme. The washroom stands largely as it was at the time of closure.