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Former Fairfield Hospital

Location

Yarra Bend Road,, FAIRFIELD VIC 3078 - Property No B6695

File Number

B6695

Level

State

Statement of Significance

A purpose designed hospital of State significance as the first infectious diseases hospital in Victoria. In 1926 the advanced design of the complex was considered by visiting American hospital expert Dr MacEachern as "the best fever hospital plan with which he had ever come in contact". Fairfield has a distinctive history as the location of Melbourne's infectious diseases hospital, and the spatial and symbolic isolation of its first fifty years are key aspects of the site's social and physical character.
Although the complex has grown dramatically since 1900, the materials and roof shapes used have been generally in harmony over the major period of building (1900-49); hence, it is both an important homogenous environment and a catalogue of distinctive buildings from this period. By its sequential growth, it also represents events in the State's exposure to infectious diseases with each new ward or structure representing yet another imported disease.
The association of prominent hospital architects Anketell and Kingsley Henderson with the Fairfield complex dates from 1914 to the 1930s, their work having a key influence in hospital design in metropolitan and country Victoria. The three-storeyed F.V.G. Scholes block of 1949 that was designed by the Chief Architect of the Public Works Department Percy Everett, although outside of this period, is also an important Modernist building in the character of office designs 30 to 40 years later.
Landscape elements are important contributors to the visual character of Fairfield Holpital, forming an avenue of approach to the building and the river. Three deodars (Cedrus deodara) and two sugar gums (Eucalyptus cladocalyx) are recorded on the National Trust's Register of Significant Trees, and a single Indian Fig (Ficus palmata) is classified on the Register and believed to the the only specimen in Australia.
Classified: 03/07/1995

Group