Fremantle Arts Centre is a multi-disciplinary institution hosting exhibitions, visual arts courses and music lectures in a historic building in the heart of Fremantle.
The imposing colonial Gothic building, covering 2.5 hectares of land, towers over the bay - it was once the largest prisoner-built public building in the state (after Fremantle Prison). It was erected between 1861 and 1868, and was once used as a mental asylum and later as a hospital for the insane who had committed a crime.
The mental asylum operated until the early 1900s, when after two suspicious deaths and the ensuing public outcry, the government inspected and ordered the building to be demolished as "unfit for the purposes for which it is used". Patients of the hospital were moved to other hospitals between 1901 and 1905, but the building itself survived.
For a while afterwards, the building housed homeless women and later housed a midwifery school. During World War II, it was the headquarters of the American armed forces. After the war, the building briefly became the Fremantle Technical School, and in 1957 the Department of Education again decided to demolish the building to make way for a school. The decision sparked a wave of public protests, led by the Mayor of Fremantle, Sir Frederick Samson. After several years of desperately seeking funding, a project to restore the building began in 1970. From 1972 it housed the Maritime Museum, later moved to Victoria Embankment, and the Arts House, still in operation today.
Today, the Art House hosts many events, attracting over three thousand people each year. Particularly popular are the open-air summer concerts featuring international stars such as Morcheeba and Groove Armada.
