Homes to surround historic Brooklyn Park convent, orphanage

Homes to surround historic Brooklyn Park convent, orphanage - realestate.com.au
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Adelaide
Homes to surround historic Brooklyn Park convent, orphanage
Jessica Brown
Updated 17 May 2026, 8:21am
First published 17 May 2026, 7:30am
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The Brooklyn Park property at 46-50 Marshall Tce has a colourful history.
New homes are set to be built around a historic Brooklyn Park property that once served as a convent, orphanage and a Catholic schoolhouse following its sale.
The five-bedroom home at 46-50 Marshall Tce , which dates back to the late 1800s and has local heritage status, was snapped up for an undisclosed price.
Selling agent Anthony Fahey, of Ray White Henley Beach, said there was huge interest in the property, which sold before its expressions of interest closing date.
He said the buyer planned to fix up the historic building and use the remaining land of the 4457sqm property, which spans four titles, for housing.
It’s served as a convent, orphanage and a Catholic schoolhouse over the years.
It’s dated and in need of some TLC.
As the building is heritage listed, it cannot be demolished.
Seller Martin Brennan, whose late parents bought the property four decades ago, said when it hit the market last month that the home started out as a convent for the Salesian Sisters.
Before being converted to a family home, he said the building included a chapel – with stained glass windows above the entry door still bearing the initials SJB, in homage of Saint John Bosco.
The building later became a Salesian college, Mr Brennan said, where one of his brothers – who attended the school as a youngster some 20 years before the family purchased the property – received a “slap over the wrists by one of the nuns’’.
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A three-storey building at the rear of the property, long since demolished, was known as St John’s Boys Town, which records show was an orphanage but Mr Brennan said was used as the college boarding house.
Records also show the former building earlier operated as the St John the Baptist Home for Boys, which provided alternative accommodation for Catholic boys committed to the Boys’ Reformatory at Magill from 1898.
It’s on a huge 4457sqm block in the middle of suburbia.
It’s close to Adelaide CBD.
However, Mr Brennan said the Home, once described as an “institution for the education and training of uncontrollable boys’’, was on an adjacent site and was never on his parent’s property.
After his family bought the home, Mr Brennan said local clergy visited regularly and the residence became somewhat of a “24-7’’ drop-in centre for local youth.
“My mother was trained as a counsellor and … she just helped young people to navigate their way through life,’’ he said.
“There’s hundreds and hundreds of young people and families that knew our parents very well and would know the house very well.’’
– with Lauren Ahwan
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