Upstairs Ward

The room visible here is an upstairs ward inside the former Female Ward 9 and 10, part of the Kirkbride Complex at Callan Park in Rozelle, New South Wales. Sunlight enters through broken windowpanes, reaching a floor thick with dust and debris. No furnishings remain. Paint has pulled away from the surfaces. The stillness in the frame is complete. 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 came to £235,539. Seventeen freestone blocks were arranged in a square totalling 10 acres, comprising 30 buildings with 170 single rooms and 41 dormitories, all linked by a continuous covered veranda. The complex was designed for approximately 766 patients at completion. The design was the work of three collaborators: Colonial Architect James Barnet, Inspector General of the Insane Dr Frederic Norton Manning, and Charles Moore, Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, who was responsible for the grounds and landscape. Manning had toured England, France, Germany and the United States in 1876 and returned with drawings of Chartham Down Hospital in Canterbury, Kent, which became the planning model. The approach was adapted for the New South Wales climate, with extensive verandah spaces added throughout. Callan Park was Australia's first purpose-built hospital for moral therapy treatment. The New South Wales State Heritage Register statement of significance describes it as "the first to be designed as a curative and therapeutic environment". Light, air, distributed pavilions, and carefully designed courtyards were not incidental to the building; they were the treatment. By 1930, the wards held 1,500 patients against a designed capacity of 600 to 766. The hospital closed fully on 30 April 2008, with remaining patients transferred to Concord Hospital. The Sydney College of the Arts vacated the Kirkbride Complex at the end of 2019. This photograph was made in 2019, in the year the buildings fell quiet again.