Arches

The arches at Waterfall Sanatorium run along the front of one of the original 1909 ward blocks. The arched walkway is a covered colonnade in dressed sandstone, with a tiled roof and timber-framed glass panels above each arch. The columns are massive. The arches themselves are gentle round-headed forms, the masonry weathered to grey-tan. The walkway floor is tiled, the patterns picked out in red and cream. Beyond the colonnade, the open ward bays are visible through their original timber French doors. The whole front facade reads as Edwardian institutional architecture at its most considered. Light comes through the colonnade at an angle that the original architects would recognise.

Waterfall Sanatorium was built in 1909 by the New South Wales Government as a tuberculosis treatment facility, located on a forested ridge south of Sydney. The site was chosen for its altitude, its prevailing winds, and the available bushland that surrounded the wards. The architecture followed the open-air design philosophy that defined TB sanatoria of the era: long ward blocks with colonnaded verandahs, ventilation slits, rooms that opened to the outside. The arches in this photograph were part of that design. Patients sat under them in the afternoons, in the sun where the sun reached. The buildings outlasted tuberculosis as a major public health problem in Australia.