Callan Park Hospital - Rozelle

Callan Park Hospital Rozelle for the Insane (1878 – 1914) was an insane asylum located in the grounds of Callan Park, an area on the shores of Iron Cove in the Sydney suburb of Lilyfield in Australia. In 1915 the facility was renamed Callan Park Mental Hospital, and again in 1976 to Callan Park Hospital - Rozelle. Since 1994, the facility has been formally known as Rozelle Hospital. In April 2008, all Rozelle Hospital services and patients were transferred to Concord Hospital.

In 1873 the Colonial Government of New South Wales purchased the Callan Park site, then known as "Callan Estates", with the purpose of building a large lunatic asylum to ease the severe overcrowding at the Gladesville Hospital for the Insane, at Bedlam Point, near Tarban Creek in Gladesville. The new lunatic asylum was designed according to the views of Dr Thomas Kirkbride, an American. Colonial Architect James Barnet worked with the Inspector of the Insane Dr Frederick Norton Manning to produce a group of twenty neo-classical buildings. These were completed in 1885 and named the Kirkbride Block.

The Park (Special Provisions) Act, 2002 / {{{4}}} (NSW) restricts future uses of the site to health and education, but the New South Wales Government has not yet revealed its development intentions. After a period of extensive renovation, the Kirkbride Complex which housed the former hospital, the Sydney College of the Arts, the fine arts campus of the University of Sydney, commenced occupancy under a 99–year lease.

It was later revealed in Frank Sartor's biography, The Fog on the Hill - How NSW Labor Lost its Way, that the NSW Government led by Kristina Keneally secretly planned to compensate Sydney University on the 'loss' of Callan Park by offering it the North Eveleigh site in Redfern, which had been prepared for tender.

Kirkbride Callan Park Rozelle
The Kirkbride complex is a series of individual single, two and three storey sandstone buildings in the Victorian free classical style set in parkland on the shores of Iron Cove at Rozelle. The complex was originally designed and constructed for use as a state-of-the-art psychiatric hospital. In 1873 the State Government purchased the site, then known as Callan Estates, for £12,500 to build a new psychiatric hospital. In 1876, Garry Owen House, the original homestead on the site, now the NSW Writer’s Centre, was used to accommodate the first patients at the new hospital.

Callan Park Gates -Rozelle
In 1873 the Colonial Government of New South Wales purchased the Callan Park site, then known as "Callan Estates", with the purpose of building a large lunatic asylum to ease the severe overcrowding at the Gladesville Hospital for the Insane, at Bedlam Point, near Tarban Creek in Gladesville. The new lunatic asylum was designed according to the views of Dr Thomas Kirkbride, an American. Colonial Architect James Barnet worked with the Inspector of the Insane Dr Frederick Norton Manning to produce a group of twenty neo-classical buildings. These were completed in 1885 and named the Kirkbride Block.

Kirkbride Callan Park Rozelle Elevation
The Scottish born colonial architect James Johnstone Barnet (1827- 1904) designed Kirkbride in 1877,

Callan Park Hospital - Rozelle

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