The Rockefeller New Medical School (the Blackburn Building) opens in 1933
From Faculty of Medicine Online Museum and Archive
During the tenure of Professor Stump's deanship, the University had received a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation to construct a new building for the Faculty of Medicine at a time of reorganisation and modernisation of the medical curriculum and the development of research as an integral component of modern medicine.
The new medical school was designed so as to create a direct link between the campus Faculty and Royal Prince Alfred Hospital. Government Architect Evan Smith began designing the building in 1931 which was completed and opened in 1933. Of rectangular design with a central octagon, the building housed the clinical school and research facilities, with teaching laboratories and theatres for senior medical students on the west side and research laboratories on the east. The first and second floors housed medicine and surgery, the third floor pathology, and the fourth floor obstetrics and bacteriology. The central octagon housed the library, pathology museum and animal house.
The medical school and Royal Prince Alfred Hospital were joined by an aqueduct-like arched corridor of brick, known as the Professor's Walk or Lambie's Walk, which provided direct access to the Professorial ward block.
The close proximity of the new medical school to the morgue at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital enabled students to participate in hospital autopsies and the teaching of post-mortem examination practices.
The building was later named The Blackburn Building in honour of the Chancellor of the University, Sir Charles Bickerton Blackburn.[1],[1]
- Next article in timeline: Sir Harold Robert Dew becomes eighth Dean of the Faculty of Medicine in 1936