Lilydale House at Marrick & Co

Mirvac Design and Tonkin Zulaikha Greer

The Nurses’ Quarters was built in 1909 as a residence for the nurses working at the hospital, designed by prominent architect and alderman, Lindsay Thompson. It was converted to a casualty ward and outpatients’ clinic in the 1960s and was used for ancillary hospital services since that time, before being operated as a preschool in 1992. The building has played a continuous role in the community for 100 years.
The adaptive reuse of the heritage Nurses’ Quarters as Lilydale House makes a charismatic centrepiece in Mirvac’s urban renewal of the former Marrickville Hospital site.
The site is highly significant for its role in the provision of health care and nursing services to the local community from 1899 to the hospital’s closure in 1991. Located on Marrickville’s main historic strip, the site is an important component of the immediate Marrickville civic precinct which also includes the Town Hall, St Brigid’s Church and the Fire Station.
The prominent two-storey Nurses’ Quarters which, along with the Main Ward Block, comprises the core of the Lilydale Street face brick buildings, presents as the most recognisable public face of the former hospital.

Photography: Martin Seigner