Liverpool Hospital, Liverpool, N.S.W.

Scarce, early c.20th colour collotype by Hardy Wilson (1881-1951) of Liverpool Hospital, New South Wales.
Dated at lower right in the image, ‘1922’ but published 1924.
Liverpool Hospital began in the 1790s as a tent facility for convicts and soldiers. A permanent brick building was established on the Georges River in 1813. Between 1822 and 1830, a stone hospital designed by architect Francis Greenway was constructed using convict labour; this building currently houses a TAFE NSW campus.In 1851, the facility transitioned into a Benevolent Asylum for elderly and infirm men, later known as the Liverpool State Hospital and Home. 

Hardy Wilson commenced his systematic survey of the early colonial architecture built between 1790 to 1840 in New South Wales and Tasmania in 1912, completing the project a decade later in 1922. At the time, no comparable architectural survey had been undertaken in Australia. The resulting body of work became an important documentary record of colonial buildings, many of which were subsequently demolished. Wilson’s drawings and written observations therefore preserve detailed evidence of architectural forms, construction methods, and domestic buildings that would otherwise have been lost. It was the first major psurvey dedicated to the documentation and conservation of Australian buildings.