| Details (Known As) |
Former Royal Adelaide Hospital (South-West Precinct) [including Sheridan Building (former Kiosk), Bice Building, Women's Health Centre (former Outpatients' Department), Allied Health Services Building (former Admissions and Casualty Department), McEwin Building, Former Margaret Graham Nurses' Home (State Heritage Place No 13093), remnant iron-railing fence to North Terrace, and brick boundary wall to Frome Road] |
| Significance |
The Former Royal Adelaide Hospital (South-West Precinct) comprises a cohesive group of related buildings occupying a prominent position at the south western corner of the Former Royal Adelaide Hospital, and is representative of the importance of the Hospital in South Australia's history. Established by the colonial government in 1841, the Hospital is the oldest facility of its kind in the state, and has occupied its present site since 1856. It has functioned as the principal public/ teaching hospital for South Australia, and centre for medical research and training for over 170 years.
The place demonstrates an important aspect of South Australian history in the development of public health and the growth of centralised services for the community in the first half of the twentieth century. Its location, on the corner of North Terrace and Frome Road, demonstrates the early twentieth century planning for a larger and more efficient hospital. Although the six buildings in the precinct were constructed over a period of more than forty years from 1908 to 1946, the result is a carefully considered complex of structures related by location, scale, aesthetic detail and materials, which demonstrate the expansion of the hospital in response to population growth and advances in medical treatment in the early to mid-twentieth century.
A significant quality of these buildings is both their individual and group aesthetic which is quite distinct from other contemporaneous architects' work. The precinct evolved from a Master Plan for the site conceived in 1921-22, and progressively implemented over the following 25 years. The six buildings display a cohesive design aesthetic originating with the design for the Former Margaret Graham Nurses' Home completed in 1911 (State Heritage Place No 13093), and continued in the work of successive architects in the Architect-in-Chief's Department, including the important South Australian architect George Gavin Lawson who was employed for a time in the Department. Their formal design and the aesthetic qualities of the group demonstrate an outstanding and original interpretation of Edwardian/Inter-War Free and Stripped Classical design in South Australia which evolved, with repeated scale and detail, over several decades from the early 1900s to the 1940s.
The distinctive and original design vocabulary demonstrated by the buildings in the precinct was first introduced in the Margaret Graham Nurses' Home. As well as distinctive colonnaded verandahs to all levels the building displays a design vocabulary of bell cast roof forms, broad eaves with brackets, rendered rusticated plinth with face red brick walls above, and entrance porticoes with rusticated columns. The essence of this style is further elaborated in the Bice Building (completed 1927) and repeated in later buildings in the North Terrace group, including the Women's Health Centre and Allied Health Services Building (both completed in 1935) and the McEwin Building (completed in 1946). These four finely-detailed multi-storied buildings are complemented by the simplified tempietto (temple-like) form of the small central Sheridan Building (1925). The exterior integrity of the group is high and together these five buildings present as a unified and readily recognisable precinct at the eastern end of the North Terrace streetscape.
As a prominent landmark, and the primary access point to the Former Royal Adelaide Hospital for most patients and visitors, the precinct has important cultural and social associations for the South Australian community as the focus for public health care and medical research for most of the state.
The six buildings are significant both as contributory elements within a cohesive group, and individually.
The Former Margaret Graham Nurses' Home, on Frome Road, was listed in 1985 and is State Heritage Place 13093. Refer to the South Australian Heritage Register for details of the listing.
The Sheridan Building (former Kiosk) is a small but distinctive octagonal structure located at the main entrance to the Hospital. It was completed in 1925, having been largely funded, under a private bequest from Alice Frances Keith Sheridan, and her sister Violet. It operated for many years as a kiosk and tea-room, staffed by volunteers, and profits were used to purchase extra equipment for the hospital. It demonstrates the importance of philanthropy and volunteers in the provision of public facilities at this time. The building is notable for its formal design and aesthetic qualities, as an interpretation of the classical tempietto form applied to a small public building. It was designed by the Architect-in-Chief's Department along with other buildings in the group. It is an excellent representative of a small well-designed public building.
Completed in 1927, the four-storey Bice Building was the first of several multi-storey buildings proposed as part of the new Master Plan for the hospital developed in 1921/22. It comprised administration offices, accommodation for medical staff, and wards with open balconies. Its design reflects the needs of the evolving hospital site and modern theories of hospital design, which included cross ventilation and balconies and north-south orientation, to allow the benefits of sunlight and 'clean air' for patient care and cure. The formal design and aesthetic qualities demonstrate an outstanding and original interpretation of Edwardian/Inter-War Free Classical design. Designed by the Architect-in-Chief's Department it may have been influenced by the work of George Gavin Lawson. This distinctive style is repeated in other iterations in all the buildings in the North Terrace group.
The Women's Health Centre and Allied Health Services Building are also derived from the 1921-22 Master Plan for a larger and more efficient hospital, and are essentially intact and capable of demonstrating hospital design theories of the time. Construction of both buildings was delayed due to depressed economic conditions, and they did not open for patients until late 1935. The Women's Health Centre was originally built as the new Outpatients' Department and its design reflects an important change in medical practices, with the separation of outpatients' treatment from admission wards. Similarly, the Allied Health Services Building, originally the Casualty and Admissions Department, reflects contemporary theories of hospital design by incorporating a range of ward and room sizes, to provide patients with accommodation appropriate for their treatment. Both buildings repeat the distinctive style and design vocabulary established in the adjacent Bice Building.
Though not completed until 1946 due to the intervention of World War Two, the four-storey McEwin Building also belongs to the suite of multi-storeyed buildings first conceived in the early 1920s. Designed as the new Operating Theatre Block, it incorporated nine up-to-date general and specialised operating theatres, and well-equipped X-Ray department. It also included wards for surgical and medical cases, featuring balconies and sundecks for patient access to fresh air as an aid to recovery. Structurally, the building is a departure from the load-bearing face brick of its neighbours, being of steel-framed construction encased in concrete, with concrete floors and balconies, however the exterior is sheathed in face brickwork to harmonise with other buildings in the group. Its formal design and aesthetic qualities include the use of design details first established in the 1922 design for the adjacent Bice Building. The continuation of the earlier detail (particularly the bell cast roof form, rendered plinth and face red brick walls) by the architects in the Architect-in-Chief's department when developing the 1930s Stripped Classical design links the buildings together, while allowing the McEwin Building to be assessed as an individually aesthetically significant building in its own right. |