Fremantle Arts Centre, Heritage building in Fremantle, Australia.

The Fremantle Arts Centre occupies a limestone building with Gothic architectural features, tall windows, and ornamental details adorning its exterior walls. It houses exhibition galleries, artist studios, workshop spaces, and an interior courtyard regularly used for events and performances.

Designed in colonial Gothic style by Lieutenant-Colonel Edmund Henderson, Comptroller-General of Convicts, the building was erected by convict labour from 1861 under James Manning and the Twentieth Company of Engineers, taking four years; the first patients entered in July 1865. George Temple-Poole added the north-east wing facing Finnerty Street in 1886 and southern wings in 1890 and 1894. After an 1890s gold-rush overcrowding and an inquiry, patients were moved out between 1901 and 1909.

The name recalls the site's later life: until World War II it was known as the Old Women's Home, housing homeless women and sometimes delinquent girls, and it also served as a midwifery school. Since 1972 it has held the Fremantle Arts Centre, and in 1976 it inspired the Fremantle Arts Centre Press, now Fremantle Press, whose books are distributed through Penguin Press.

The complex sits on a 2.4-hectare site on Ord Street, opposite the Fremantle Leisure and Aquatic Centre and near John Curtin College of the Arts and Christian Brothers College. The main entrance faces Ord Street, with the north-east wing running along Finnerty Street. The site slopes, so the ground drops away toward the harbour side.

The limestone walls bear scratches and initials carved by convicts during its construction, offering a direct physical connection to the workers who built it. These marks bring visitors face to face with the human story embedded in the building itself.