Hospital Building

Boston Free Hospital for Women // 1895

Buildings of New EnglandLeave a comment

This handsome yellow brick building, designed by architects, Shaw and Hunnewell, was completed in 1895 as the Boston Free Hospital for Women. The hospital was organized in 1875 in a converted rowhouse in Boston’s South End, and after relocating once, it was decided that a purpose-built hospital was needed for the growing demands of the institution. A site in Brookline on the Muddy River, overlooking Frederick Law Olmsted’s Riverway and Olmsted Park, was purchased and the hospital was opened in 1895. The brick and limestone hospital building is somewhat Chateauesque in style and when opened, had no electricity and no telephone. The hospital is historically significant as the first teaching hospital for Harvard and as the first hospital in the country to apply radiation treatment for cancer, along with being a major research facility in fertility, especially the work of Dr. John Rock (who lived nearby) on the development of the birth control pill and research on in-vitro fertilization. The Free Hospital for Women merged with the Boston Lying In
Hospital (now part of Brigham & Women’s), which closed its Brookline Campus in the 1960s. In 1984, the firm of Childs, Bertman and Tseckares oversaw the conversion of the buildings to condominiums, called The Park, with sympathetic new construction.

Chestnut Hill Benevolent Association Buildings // 1918

Buildings of New EnglandLeave a comment

In 1915, Mary Longyear, a faithful follower of Mary Baker Eddy and the Christian Science faith, purchased the land from the Lyman Estate in Brookline, Massachusetts, and donated to the Christian Science Church. Planning began immediately to build a facility as a “temporary resort where those seeking relief through Christian Science may go to find practical assistance in overcoming their difficulties.” The need for a hospital/sanatorium was established by Mary Baker Eddy as early as 1906, and it would be over a decade before this need was filled. The complex was built in stages beginning in 1918 with this building, the main building, observation tower and a powerhouse designed by Clarence T. McFarland. The buildings were designed in the Tudor Revival style, blending in with the many country estates in this section of Brookline. The complex would train nurses and treat patients for over 100 years and remains an important institution into the 21st century.

Boston City Hospital Relief Station, Haymarket // 1902-1960s

Buildings of New EnglandLeave a comment
Image courtesy of City of Boston Archives

In 1858, as Boston began to see a massive influx of immigration into the city and rapid industrialization, the City of Boston authorized the creation of a new hospital whose purpose was the “reception of those sick and injured: citizens of Boston who, from any cause, were unable to otherwise obtain care and treatment,” especially in cases of “acute illness and for the victims of accident or injury.” This was the Boston City Hospital, which was established in the South End, and is now known as the Boston Medical Center. The hospital was thought to be too far away for victims of injury of illness to get to promptly, so a relief station was built in Haymarket Square, replacing the recently demolished Boston & Maine Railroad Station. The new, standalone hospital building was constructed of brick and stood three stories tall and opened in 1902. On its first day of operation, doctors and staff saved the life of a man who had attempted suicide by ingesting carbolic acid. A Boston Globe reporter speculated that had the patient been  transported to the more distant Massachusetts General or City Hospitals, he would have surely died. The Colonial Revival style building was designed by the firm of Kendall, Taylor & Stevens, who specialized in medical facilities and other institutional building designs. The structure was demolished by the 1960s, when much of the Government Center/West End areas were razed for urban renewal.

Dimock Center – Cheney Surgical Building // 1899

Buildings of New England1 Comment

With funds for expansion at the New England Hospital for Women and Children in Roxbury, the hospital’s board commissioned architect Willard T. Sears (also the architect of the earlier Cary Cottage and Zakrzewska Building) to design a new surgical building at the hospital’s growing campus. Construction began on the new Cheney Surgical building in 1899 on the birthday of its namesake, Edna Dow Cheney an original incorporator of the hospital and then President. The Cheney Surgical Building was designed in the Colonial Revival style in brick, with a four-story central block with three-story wings. The central entranceway is accentuated by a classical porte-cochere topped by a Palladian window, in keeping with the Georgian Revival tradition of symmetry and classical vocabulary. The building is one of the first you see when climbing the hill into the campus.


Dimock Center – Cary Cottage // 1872

Buildings of New England5 Comments

The New England Hospital for Women and Children (known today as the Dimock Community Health Center), is comprised of eight major buildings on a nine acre site located on a small hill in the Roxbury neighborhood of Boston, close to the border with Jamaica Plain. The complex is significant for its role in the history of women in medicine as both a teaching and a practicing hospital, as well as for its architecture. The facility was incorporated as the New England Hospital for Women and Children in 1863, almost five years before Roxbury was annexed to Boston. The Hospital was founded by Dr. Marie E. Zakrzewska together with Lucy Goddard and Edna Dow Cheney in order to provide women with medical care by competent physicians of their own sex and to educate women in the study and practice of medicine. As such, it was one of the first hospitals of its kind in America. The oldest building in the complex is the Cary Cottage, pictured here. The charming building was constructed in 1872 by the architecture firm of Cummings & Sears. The Cary Cottage served as the hospital’s original maternity cottage, and is also important as an almost intact example of Stick Style architecture. The building was intentionally detached from the general surgical facilities to minimize the dangers of infection during childbirth.