Second Townsville General Hospital

Second Townsville General Hospital
Second Townsville General Hospital
	Second Townsville General Hospital, shortly after closure, 2007
Location	24 Eyre Street, North Ward, Townsville, City of Townsville, Queensland, Australia
Coordinates	19°15′08″S146°48′47″E / 19.2523°S 146.8131°E Coordinates: 19°15′08″S146°48′47″E / 19.2523°S 146.8131°E
Design period	1940s - 1960s (post-World War II)
Built	1945 - 1951
Architect	Donoghue & Fulton
Architectural style(s)	Modernism
Queensland Heritage Register
	Official name: Townsville General Hospital, North Ward Hospital
Type	state heritage (built)
Designated	26 April 1996
Reference no.	601388
Significant period	1945-1951 (fabric); 1930s-1950s (historical)
	Location of Second Townsville General Hospital in Queensland

Last updated March 14, 2019

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The Second Townsville General Hospital is a heritage-listed former hospital and now an apartment building at 24 Eyre Street, North Ward, Townsville, City of Townsville, Queensland, Australia. It was designed by Donoghue & Fulton and built from 1945 to 1951. It is also known as North Ward Hospital. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 26 April 1996.^[1]

A hospital is a health care institution providing patient treatment with specialized medical and nursing staff and medical equipment. The best-known type of hospital is the general hospital, which typically has an emergency department to treat urgent health problems ranging from fire and accident victims to a sudden illness. A district hospital typically is the major health care facility in its region, with a large number of beds for intensive care and additional beds for patients who need long-term care. Specialized hospitals include trauma centers, rehabilitation hospitals, children's hospitals, seniors' (geriatric) hospitals, and hospitals for dealing with specific medical needs such as psychiatric treatment and certain disease categories. Specialized hospitals can help reduce health care costs compared to general hospitals. Hospitals are classified as general, specialty, or government depending on the sources of income received.

North Ward is a popular coastal suburb in Townsville, Queensland, Australia.The suburb is one of the oldest in the city but has undergone significant development over many decades. It is very popular with tourists and investors. It is home to some of the cities top attractions including "The Strand", The Waterpark, The Rockpool, and the Tobruk Memorial Baths.

The City of Townsville is an Australian local government area (LGA) located in North Queensland, Australia. It encompasses the city of Townsville, together with the surrounding rural areas, to the south are the communities of Alligator Creek, Woodstock and Reid River, and to the north are Northern Beaches and Paluma, and also included is Magnetic Island. It currently has a population of 186,757 residents, and is the 28th-largest LGA in Australia.

History

The first hospital in Townsville was opened in a cottage on The Strand in 1866 and was known as the Burdekin and Flinders Districts Hospital. In 1881 it was relocated to the present site on Stanton Hill. A two storied building was completed in 1882 and numerous buildings were subsequently built on the site.^[1]

The Strand, Townsville seaside foreshore precinct located in Townsville, Australia

The Strand is a seaside foreshore located in Townsville, Australia. It is located in the suburb of North Ward. The Strand has a view of the Port of Townsville and Magnetic Island, as well as to Cape Cleveland. Features in the area include a jetty, a recreational park, restaurants, cafes and pools.

The Second Townsville General Hospital was designed by Donoghue and Fulton between 1935 and 1939 but construction was delayed due to the outbreak of World War II. On 11 November 1945, the foundation stone was laid by the Queensland Treasurer, Ned Hanlon.^[2] On 21 April 1951 he officially opened the hospital in his role as Queensland Premier.^[3] The new hospital was to be the largest facility of its type in Australia outside a capital city and had been built at a cost of approximately £500,000 for building and equipment. It opened with approximately 270 beds. Dr Kiernan Dorney was the medical superintendent and the hospital claimed to have the largest staff of specialists outside Brisbane.^[1]

World War II, also known as the Second World War, was a global war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. The vast majority of the world's countries—including all the great powers—eventually formed two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis. A state of total war emerged, directly involving more than 100 million people from over 30 countries. The major participants threw their entire economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities behind the war effort, blurring the distinction between civilian and military resources. World War II was the deadliest conflict in human history, marked by 50 to 85 million fatalities, most of whom were civilians in the Soviet Union and China. It included massacres, the genocide of the Holocaust, strategic bombing, premeditated death from starvation and disease, and the only use of nuclear weapons in war.

Edward Michael Hanlon was an Australian politician, who was Premier of Queensland from 1946 to 1952.

Brisbane is the capital of and the most populated city in the Australian state of Queensland, and the third most populous city in Australia. Brisbane's metropolitan area has a population of 2.5 million, and the South East Queensland region, centred on Brisbane, encompasses a population of more than 3.5 million. The Brisbane central business district stands on the historic European settlement and is situated inside a peninsula of the Brisbane River, about 15 kilometres from its mouth at Moreton Bay. The metropolitan area extends in all directions along the floodplain of the Brisbane River Valley between Moreton Bay and the Great Dividing Range, sprawling across several of Australia's most populous local government areas (LGAs)—most centrally the City of Brisbane, which is by far the most populous LGA in the nation. The demonym of Brisbane is "Brisbanite".

Between 1932 and 1945 was a period of rapid development in hospitals in Queensland. This was partly due to the passing of the Hospital Act in 1923 which laid the foundations for the Queensland Government to resume responsibility for financing and administrating public hospitals which had previously been run by voluntary committees. Under the Act the state was divided into regions and regions into districts. Each region was controlled from a base hospital which coordinated other hospitals in the region. Hospital boards, dominated by government representatives and excluding members of the medical profession, were created to oversee the administration of the hospitals. The Queensland Government was to provide 60% of the running costs while the remainder was to be met by local government. The boards had the power under the act to appoint their own architects. Ned Hanlon, who was minister for Health and Home Affairs from 1935 until 1944 and premier from 1946 until 1952, was responsible for many of the projects undertaken at this time. The Free Hospital Scheme was introduced to Queensland in 1946.^[1]

Local government in the Australian state of Queensland describes the institutions and processes by which towns and districts can manage their own affairs to the extent permitted by the Local Government Act 1993–2007. Queensland is divided into 77 local government areas which may be called Cities, Towns, Shires or Regions. Each area has a council which is responsible for providing a range of public services and utilities, and derives its income from both rates and charges on resident ratepayers, and grants and subsidies from the State and Commonwealth governments.

Tenders were called in 1947 for new nurses quarters at Townsville designed by JP Donoghue, Cusick and Edwards. By 1964 the hospital complex also included a maternity hospital, a thoracic block, isolation and psychiatric annexes, a dental clinic, an Institute of Tropical Medicine (established in 1910 and the first medical research organisation in Australia) and a Commonwealth Serum Laboratory.^[1]

A maternity hospital specializes in caring for women during pregnancy and childbirth. It also provides care for newborn infants, and may act as a centre for clinical training in midwifery and obstetrics. Formerly known as lying-in hospitals, most of them, like cottage hospitals, have been absorbed into larger general hospitals, where they operate as the maternity department.

In hospitals and other medical facilities, an isolation ward is a separate ward used to isolate patients suffering from infectious diseases. Several wards for individual patients are usually placed together in an isolation unit.

Psychiatric hospital hospitals or wards specializing in the treatment of serious mental disorders

Psychiatric hospitals, also known as mental hospitals, mental health units, mental asylums or simply asylums, are hospitals or wards specializing in the treatment of serious mental disorders, such as major depressive disorder, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Psychiatric hospitals vary widely in their size and grading. Some hospitals may specialize only in short term or outpatient therapy for low-risk patients. Others may specialize in the temporary or permanent care of residents who, as a result of a psychological disorder, require routine assistance, treatment, or a specialized and controlled environment. Patients are often admitted on a voluntary basis, but people whom psychiatrists believe may pose a significant danger to themselves or others may be subject to involuntary commitment. Psychiatric hospitals may also be referred to as psychiatric wards or units when they are a subunit of a regular hospital.

Other hospital works designed by Donoghue and Fulton include general hospitals at Kingaroy (1936-38), Ayr (1941) and Roma, the Nurses' Quarters at Nambour Hospital (1937-38) and maternity hospitals at Goondiwindi, Rockhampton, Warwick and Nambour. Later works include the Barcaldine General Hospital by Fulton and Collins built in 1957 and the Thoracic Block at the Toowoomba Hospital by Donoghue, Cusick and Edwards in 1958.^[1]

Kingaroy is an agricultural town and locality in the South Burnett Region, Queensland, Australia. It is approximately 210 kilometres (130 mi) or about 2½ hours drive north-west of the state capital Brisbane. The town is situated on the junction of the D'Aguilar and the Bunya Highways. At the 2016 census, Kingaroy had a population of 10,020 with a median age of 37.

Ayr is a town and locality in the Shire of Burdekin, Queensland, Australia. It is the centre of a sugarcane-growing region. In the 2016 census, Ayr had a population of 8,281 people.

Roma is a town, locality and the administrative centre in the Maranoa Region, Queensland, Australia. The town was incorporated in 1867 and is named after Lady Diamantina Bowen, the wife of Sir George Bowen, the Governor of Queensland at the time. At the 2016 census, Roma had a population of 6,848.

The Second Townsville General Hospital demonstrates the emergence of the Australia-wide trend for a progressive image, inspired by European modernist architecture, for highrise hospital design. The high rise plan, in which various functions could be concentrated in vertically stacked spaces, replaced the earlier pavilion planning principles, in which detached buildings containing single wards were widely separated. Developments in medical theory meant that ventilation and isolation were no longer considered as important to the health of the patient. New priorities based on more efficient use of space, staff, circulation between different parts of the hospital and reduced heating costs led to the popularity of the much more compact highrise type of hospital. Block 3 at the Brisbane General Hospital, designed in 1930, was the first hospital building in Queensland to fully incorporate the principles of the highrise plan. It was designed in the Spanish Mission style to coordinate with the earlier Blocks 1 and 2. The design for the Second Townsville General Hospital was probably the first in Queensland to combine highrise planning principles with a progressive modern image.^[1]

First introduced into Australia in the 1930s the highrise plan soon dominated new hospital construction. Melbourne architects Stephensen and Meldrum, later Stephensen and Turner, and Leighton Irwin were noted specialists in this increasingly complex field of architectural design. The development of modernist architecture in Australia is often associated with hospitals designed by these firms in the 1930s and 1940s.^[1]

Charles Fulton is recognised as a key practitioner to have designed in the modern style in Queensland before the Second World War. Fulton was born in Sydney in 1906 and undertook his architectural training there. He worked in London for B George, Architects in 1931 and 1932. In 1933 he was employed by Hall and Cook in Brisbane and he established his practice with Donoghue in 1937. Fulton received acknowledgment for his skilled execution of this style for the Masel residence at Stanthorpe through a meritorious architecture award in the first Queensland awards programme in 1938 and again in 1940 for his own residence at Indooroopilly. In 1937 Fulton was appointed Lecturer in Charge of Architecture at the Central Technical College.^[1]

Eventually the Second Townsville General Hospital could not expand any further due to its urban location and was regularly reaching absolute capacity. The third and current Townsville Hospital at Douglas began construction in 1998 and opened in 2001, co-located with James Cook University.^[4] However the heritage-listed buildings of the second hospital, with their landmark white Art Deco appearance, enviable location, and water views, have been retained and were turned into exclusive apartments.^[5]

Description

The Second Townsville General Hospital is a six-storied concrete and brick building with a flat roof concealed behind parapet walls. It is situated near the northern corner of the hospital reserve and overlooks Cleveland Bay and Magnetic Island. The external walls, which are rendered and painted white, sit on a base of exposed brickwork. The building has a narrow plan with the long north eastern elevation forming the dominant front facade.^[1]

This symmetrical facade is divided into five distinct bays where the building steps back from the centre to the edges. The central bay is a tower-like structure which provides the main entrance on the ground level. The entrance is further emphasised through the use of exposed brickwork and a cantilevered awning. Steel framed windows form a vertical strip in the centre of the entrance tower above the awning.^[1]

On the flanking bays each level is expressed through projecting balconies which run along the north eastern elevation. The balconies have light weight metal balustrades. At the edge of the balconies, underneath the balustrades, are deep horizontal bands or valances which provide sunshading for the windows below.^[1]

Built in a modernist style the surfaces of the building are undecorated. The composition of the building contrasts horizontal with vertical elements, and sheer surfaces with carefully controlled openings and deep shadowed recesses. The vertically proportioned elements are the central entrance tower and stepped corners. The wards, with long open balconies curved and cantilevered at the ends, form the horizontals.^[1]

Heritage listing

The Second Townsville General Hospital was listed on the Queensland Heritage Register on 26 April 1996 having satisfied the following criteria.^[1]

The place is important in demonstrating the evolution or pattern of Queensland's history.

The hospital is one of the most prominent examples of the extensive hospital building program undertaken by Labour Governments in the 1930s and 1940s throughout Queensland as part of its commitment to government sponsored public health.^[1]

The first hospital in Townsville was opened in a cottage on the Strand in 1866 and was known as the Burdekin and Flinders Districts Hospital. In 1881 it was relocated to the present site on Stanton Hill. A two storied building was completed in 1882 and numerous buildings were subsequently built on the site.^[1]

The place is important in demonstrating the principal characteristics of a particular class of cultural places.

The Second Townsville General Hospital, designed in the late 1930s, is significant as an early example in Queensland of a highrise hospital influenced by European modernist architecture. This style of architecture developed in the 1930s and 1940s in Australia, with new hospitals providing many of the most prominent examples. Through its simple geometry of horizontal and vertical elements, wide cantilevered balconies with rounded corners, flat roof concealed behind parapets and its plain surfaces, Townsville General Hospital is a good example of a hospital built in this idiom.^[1]

The place has a special association with the life or work of a particular person, group or organisation of importance in Queensland's history.

The Second Townsville General Hospital is significant as an institutional building designed by the important architectural firm Donoghue and Fulton which combined the latest ideas in hospital planning with recent developments in architectural design. Charles Fulton, who designed the building, was a key practitioner and teacher of the modern trends in architectural design in Queensland. Fulton was acknowledged for his work in this style. Both the Masel residence at Stanthorpe (1938) and his own residence in Indooroopilly (1940), received a meritorious architecture award in the early Queensland Awards Programmes.^[1]

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References

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 "Townsville General Hospital (entry 601388)". Queensland Heritage Register . Queensland Heritage Council. Retrieved 1 August 2014.
↑ "FOUNDATION STONE LAID FOR HOSPITAL". Townsville Daily Bulletin . LXVII. Queensland, Australia. 12 November 1945. p. 2. Retrieved 25 March 2017– via National Library of Australia.
↑ ""New Hospital Our Most Modern"-Hanlon". Townsville Daily Bulletin . LXXI. Queensland, Australia. 23 April 1951. p. 1. Retrieved 25 March 2017– via National Library of Australia.
↑ Townsville Council website: A Chronological History of Townsville 1970 to 2003 Archived 29 September 2009 at the Wayback Machine
↑ Raggatt, Tony (1 June 2016). "Luxury units close to completion on former Townsville hospital site". Townsville Bulletin . Retrieved 25 March 2017.

Attribution

This Wikipedia article was originally based on "The Queensland heritage register" published by the State of Queensland under CC-BY 3.0 AU licence (accessed on 7 July 2014, archived on 8 October 2014). The geo-coordinates were originally computed from the "Queensland heritage register boundaries" published by the State of Queensland under CC-BY 3.0 AU licence (accessed on 5 September 2014, archived on 15 October 2014).

External links

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[qhr-1] 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 "Townsville General Hospital (entry 601388)". Queensland Heritage Register . Queensland Heritage Council. Retrieved 1 August 2014.

[2] "FOUNDATION STONE LAID FOR HOSPITAL". Townsville Daily Bulletin . LXVII. Queensland, Australia. 12 November 1945. p. 2. Retrieved 25 March 2017– via National Library of Australia.

[3] ""New Hospital Our Most Modern"-Hanlon". Townsville Daily Bulletin . LXXI. Queensland, Australia. 23 April 1951. p. 1. Retrieved 25 March 2017– via National Library of Australia.

[4] Townsville Council website: A Chronological History of Townsville 1970 to 2003 Archived 29 September 2009 at the Wayback Machine

[5] Raggatt, Tony (1 June 2016). "Luxury units close to completion on former Townsville hospital site". Townsville Bulletin . Retrieved 25 March 2017.