At a glance
- Address: 8 Macquarie Street, Sydney
- Origins: the “Rum Hospital”, built under Governor Macquarie’s contract with Garnham Blaxcell, Alexander Riley and D’Arcy Wentworth in return for a monopoly on imported rum; completed 1816
- Survivors of the Rum Hospital: its north and south wings, now Parliament House and the Sydney Mint
- Nightingale Wing: designed by Thomas Rowe, 1869, for Lucy Osburn and the Nightingale-trained nurses
- Present main buildings: Thomas Rowe won the 1878 design competition; the Victorian Classical buildings were completed and opened in 1894 (inscribed “These buildings completed A.D. 1894”)
- Status: standing, still an operating public hospital
Sydney Hospital. Sydney Hospital traces its origins to the colony’s early medical services, established soon after the First Fleet arrived in 1788. The present Macquarie Street hospital grew from the colony’s first permanent hospital, built under a contract partly paid in rum. Opened in 1816, it is Australia’s oldest continuously operating hospital.
Transcription:
THESE BUILDINGS COMPLETED / A.D. 1894
Transcription:
THESE BUILDINGS COMPLETED / A.D. 1894
Transcription:
SPES
SYDNEY HOSPITAL
Transcription:
THE SYDNEY HOSPITAL / FOUNDED A.D. 1814
[Note: the hospital itself is usually dated from the Rum Hospital, completed 1816; this inscription gives the foundation date as 1814.]
Transcription:
THE SYDNEY HOSPITAL / FOUNDED A.D. 1814
[Note: the hospital itself is usually dated from the Rum Hospital, completed 1816; this inscription gives the foundation date as 1814.]
