Adelaide Children’s Hospital – original building

The Adelaide Children’s Hospital was founded in 1876 by a group of charitable upper-class women under the guidance of Dr Alan Campbell, who had been a member of Adelaide’s Board of Health since its inception in 1873. The first hospital building was designed by William McMinn, who probably received the commission through Sir Samuel Way, the first president of the hospital, for whom McMinn had altered Montefiore in 1872-73. The original plans were for a building of three stories, but the funds were limited, and so the building committee asked that the basement be raised one foot and the top storyomitted. The hospital, built facing Sir Edwin Smith Avenue in lower North Adelaide by W. C. Torode, was ready for occupation in 1879. The building had a Jacobean tower and cast iron verandah linking the two wings and a slate roof surmounted by a spire and weather vane. Inside, the offices and dining hall were on the ground floor and the wards on the first. It stood until 1967.