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Attunga, Toorak Gardens

Houses in AdelaideSouth Australian Heritage RegisterUse Australian English from August 2015
Attunga
Attunga

Attunga was a mansion which now forms part of a hospital. The mansion was built by Benjamin Burford in 1900 on 4.5 acres (1.8ha) at 120 Kensington Road, in what was then Rose Park, (an inner eastern suburb of Adelaide, South Australia). Containing 14 rooms, the two storey house is the largest and most extravagant mansion built in the area that became known as the suburb of Toorak Gardens. With Burford's death in 1905, the property was bought by an investor from Broken Hill, Otto Georg Ludwig von Rieben. While maintaining and paying particular attention to the property, von Rieben eventually settled at "Pomona" at Mt Lofty in the Adelaide Hills.In 1944, almost forty years after he purchased it, and having lived in it for 37 years, von Rieben (then aged 82) offered Attunga to the Burnside Council free of charge, for use as a hospital, with the stipulation that the house and gardens be preserved. (In August 1943, a committee of the Council had suggested building a community hospital as part of the Council's Post-War Reconstruction and Development Plan. In November 1943, the Council adopted the committee's recommendation to spend up to £100,000 on the building of a hospital, and that the hospital was intended to be the district's principle memorial to honour Burnside's war dead. In February 1944, Mayor P.R. Claridge announced von Rieben's donation. The council subsequently unanimously accepted the donation.)By April 1949, the first stage of the conversion of the mansion had been completed, with Attunga having been converted into a convalescent hospital caring for 21 patients. When it closed in September 1956 it had cared for over 1,400 patients. In October 1956, the adjacent new 45-bed Burnside War Memorial Hospital, built at a cost of £145,000, was opened. The mansion has subsequently been used for a number of medical support purposes - for example, since March 1989 it has used as the "Attunga Medical Centre". In the 21st century, the mansion and its well-kept formal gardens continue to occupy nearly all of the western half of the original 4.5 acres, with multi-story hospital buildings covering most of the eastern half of the original area.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Attunga, Toorak Gardens (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

Attunga, Toorak Gardens
Moore Street, Adelaide Toorak Gardens

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Latitude Longitude
N -34.927777777778 ° E 138.63805555556 °
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Burnside War Memorial Hospital

Moore Street
5065 Adelaide, Toorak Gardens
South Australia, Australia
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Attunga
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Norwood Town Hall
Norwood Town Hall

The Norwood Town Hall is the council seat of the City of Norwood Payneham & St Peters, and the building includes a number of other venues. It is located at 175 The Parade in Norwood, an inner-eastern suburb of greater Adelaide, South Australia, five minutes east of the city centre. The current town hall building was completed in 1883, with the large concert hall added at the back between 1914 and 1918. The former City of Kensington and Norwood was the first outside of the City of Adelaide to receive the right to set up their own municipal corporation. The charter of the town was given on 7 July 1853 by the Governor, Sir Henry Young, and the original town hall building, constructed in 1859, was the first town hall built in South Australia.The current building was designed by Alfred Wells, who then worked as an architectural draughtsman for the firm Bayer and Withall, after his design had won a competition held in 1881. The classical style building opened in 1883 and included civic offices and a banqueting hall to service the growing town.The Town Hall clock, which was gifted by then mayor Sir Edwin Thomas Smith in 1890, is a local landmark.The Town Hall's concert hall was added during World War I, instigated by then mayor Henry J. Holden. At that time, it was the largest venue of the type in the state.Films were screened in the hall from 7 May 1897. In the 1940s the building became part of D. Clifford Theatres Ltd and was later taken over by Greater Union Cinemas.The building was listed in the South Australian Heritage Register on 28 November 1985.The concert hall is featured in the film Shine, with Geoffrey Rush playing the role of the pianist David Helfgott, who is seen in the movie playing the music of Franz Liszt. The Bösendorfer grand piano loaned by the Australian Society of Keyboard Music had to be winched up to the first floor hall. The piano is now stored in the Pilgrim Church, Flinders Street in Adelaide, where it is used for recitals each week.