National Register Listing

Jefferson Davis Hospital

a.k.a. Old Jefferson Davis Hospital; City County Hospital

1101 Elder, Houston, TX

The Jefferson Davis Hospital opened in 1925, replacing scattered facilities for indigent health care in Houston, Texas. Houston City Architect W. A. Dowdy designed the Classical Revival Style building, which cost $400,000.3 The city built the brick power plant building located at the rear of the hospital (northwest) in 1929. The property is on a slight bluff northwest of downtown Houston at the corner of Dart and Elder Streets, just north of the Southern Pacific railroad tracks, on top of a portion of the Old City Cemetery that was in operation from c.1840 to c.1870. The hospital quickly became obsolete, and in 1937 was replaced by a new building on Allen Parkway (demolished in 1999). In 1995, the Texas Historical Commission designated the entire cemetery as a State Archeological Landmark (SAL), but this designation pertains only to the site and objects directly associated with the cemetery, and not the 20th-century above-ground resources. Due to numerous and drastic changes to the site throughout the 20th century, the cemetery has lost most of the features that would identify it as a 19th-century cemetery and is therefore not nominated to the National Register at this time.

Old Houston City Cemetery

Houston was founded in 1836 by Augustus Chapman and John Kirby Allen, at the confluence of Buffalo and White Oak Bayous. Claims were made that the town would become the "great interior commercial emporium of Texas," a vision that did indeed come true. * Houston became the fourth largest city in the nation in the late 20th century and the spirit of commerce brought by the Allen Brothers continues to drive the port city.

The history of the Jefferson Davis Hospital site is linked with the history of one of the city's earliest cemeteries, created after a rash of epidemics that began in the 1830s and continued through the 1860s. A severe yellow fever outbreak ravaged the city between July and December of 1839, with 240 dead of the estimated 2,000 populous. This led to overcrowding of the San Felipe Road cemetery (now known as Founder's Memorial Park) and a need for more burial space. There are two different accounts of the actual transfer of the land for the Old City Cemetery to the City of Houston from the Allen Brothers. Clarence Drake in his 1936 W.P.A.-funded manuscript titled Cemeteries, stated that the Allen Brothers set aside a block of ground in the First Ward, North of Buffalo Bayou, for use as a cemetery and gifted the land to the city for this purpose. Janet Wagner in her report Houston City Cemetery Land Use History argues that overcrowding of San Felipe Road cemetery led Houston City Council to direct J. W. Bergin, City Sexton, to purchase five acres of land from the Allen Brothers for a burying ground. This land was located adjacent to land owned by Mr. Conklin on White Oak Bayou. The deed for Houston City Cemetery was received from the Allens on May 25, 1840. Regardless of whether the land was purchased or donated, the first internments occurred by 1840. The five-acre site was identified on various maps as the "Houston City Cemetery."

The cemetery was most likely the final resting place of many of the epidemic victims, especially those who died in the cholera epidemic of 1866, and the yellow fever outbreak of 1867. After the Civil War, the citizens of Houston, including numerous returned Confederate soldiers, freed slaves, and occupying Federal troops, were all susceptible to sickness. They were often buried together in the city cemetery without regard to class, social status, or race. The City of Houston maintained and used the cemetery through the 1870s as the major public burial ground for the city's population. In 1875 the city purchased six acres near Glenwood Cemetery for a public burying ground., and requested that burials cease at the old cemetery as well as at other smaller cemeteries around town. The only exception to this attempt at consolidation was where families already owned a plot or space in the vault. By 1879, the old cemetery was closed to additional burials. An 1880 report by R. F. Pannell, City Sexton, noted that the city cemetery was "so filled that there is no room in any of them for the burial of paupers without disturbing some graves."

After the closure of the cemetery, maintenance declined, followed by numerous requests from the city council to erect a proper fence or maintain the cemetery grounds properly. In 1893, foreshadowing thirty years into the future, W. C. and Tom Padgitt filed a petition in the 11th District Court against the City of Houston, Mayor John T. Browne, and City Health Officer George W. Larendon to prevent the removal of their parents' remains (among others) in order to build a new public school. The plan was never executed and the graves remained.

True to Houston's historical commitment to commerce, business, and industrial interests in the late 19th century began to promote the closing of cemeteries within the city limits and the removal of the internments to burial grounds outside the city limits. Businessmen and railroad entrepreneurs claimed that cemetery land, in close proximity to the growing city, was now prime and valuable real estate. By 1903, the International and Great Northern Railroad initiated the removal of remains from old St. Vincent's graveyard on block 12. Removals were also made from Episcopal and Masonic Cemeteries on Bagby Street, as well as the remains of nine sisters from the convent graveyard on Franklin Street."

Because of the State Archeological Landmark status of the cemetery, the owners of the hospital and the City of Houston (which owns the balance of the cemetery) work closely with the Texas Historical Commission to ensure that graves discovered in the course of work on the site (either demolition or new construction) are recorded and the remains are re-interred according to local and state regulations.

Establishment of Jefferson Davis Hospital at the City Cemetery

Prior to the construction of Jefferson Davis Hospital, charity health care was scattered throughout the city. In 1919, several doctors organized a hospital at Camp Logan.2 Camp Logan, constructed in 1917, was an emergency training center during World War I located on the western edge of Houston in an area that is now Memorial Park. The camp was used for the hospitalization of wounded men in 1918, and after the close of the war, the site was acquired by William C. Hogg and his brother, Mike, who turned it over to the city of Houston, at a cost, of more than 1,000 acres.13 Empty barracks at Camp Logan were converted into a serviceable hospital that marked the beginning of the Municipal Hospital, a precursor to the Jefferson Davis Hospital. Doctors themselves solicited donations and surgical instruments, and operating tables and sterilizing equipment were procured from a naval unit equipped to sail to France. The hospital at Camp Logan opened in October of 1919 with 60 beds.

On February 5, 1923, during the first term of Mayor Oscar Holcombe, the city passed Ordinance No. 749 to establish a Board of Managers for the city and county public hospital to care for charity patients.15 Despite citizen protests, plans were approved to construct the hospital on the southeastern corner of the five-acre cemetery. Several outbuildings were added by 1929, including the power plant. 16 In a 1923 Houston Press article, writer Burton Davis recorded several tombstone epitaphs that were still visible on the site, including a stone dedicated to 32 Confederate soldiers.

Jefferson Davis Hospital opened on March 15, 1925. The Texas General Contractors Association Bulletin lists a contract of $182,000 awarded to the Russell Brown Company of Houston. Total construction costs were approximately $400,000, based on the Municipal Book of Houston, 1928. The hospital had a capacity of 240 beds with a clinic, laboratory, and a paint shop. Present at the hospital dedication were representatives of the Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee Chapters of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, who petitioned to the city and county to name the hospital after the president of the Confederate States of America." The usefulness of the Jefferson Davis Hospital on Elder Street, however, was short-lived. By the 1930s, the original building was no longer large enough and a new building on Allen Parkway, south of Buffalo Bayou was erected in 1937. The second Jefferson Davis Hospital (demolished in 1999) was designed by Alfred Finn with Joseph Finger. The original hospital building was used by other county health agencies and rented out for other uses before it was abandoned in the late 1980s.

Architectural Significance of the 1924 Jefferson Davis Hospital

The Jefferson Davis Hospital is a good example of an early 20th-century hospital design that took into account changing public perception about the treatment of disease. Architectural expressions of this changing opinion are represented in the rear, screened balconies where patients could rest and convalesce. Stylistically, the hospital is similar to hospitals in New England and draws from European sources for its floor plan, style, and ward placement.

The early 20th century witnessed exponential growth in the number of hospitals nationwide. The number of hospital buildings jumped from 2,500 in 1911 to 7,000 in 1914, and four years later to 7,158 with approximately 680,000 beds. The Jefferson Davis Hospital incorporates many of the architectural elements popular in the early 20th-century hospital design. At this same time, there was a shift in the public perception of the hospital from a place to go to die to a place to recover and leave alive. In 1921, architect Edward F. Stevens argued in The American Hospital of the Twentieth Century, that hospitals in the city should be placed away "from smoke from adjoining chimneys, noise from nearby railroads, and proximity to a noisy thoroughfare of the factory are menaces to be considered." The Jefferson Davis site respects all of these criteria, with the exception of the nearby railroad that was busier in the early 20th century than it is today. He also advocated for the grounds to be "flooded with sunlight" and the part of the building interior that receives no sunlight should be used for utilities, staircases and rooms not requiring sunlight, leaving patients' rooms on the sides that receive sunlight some portion of the day. Stevens stressed the importance of providing an uplifting and calming environment, with plenty of sunlight, ventilation, and quiet space, with access to balconies." The Jefferson Davis Hospital featured two screened balconies on the rear (west) façade of the building on the second and third floors, above the raised basement. Sleeping porches became an important architectural element of hospitals in the US and in Europe, as fear of the night air was replaced by the benefits of fresh air to aid in recovery. The treatment of tuberculosis, a major disease of the 19th- and early 20th centuries, included the prescription of fresh air as a treatment and a preventative measure until antibiotics were available for treatment in the 1940s.20 The siting of the hospital on a very slight bluff and the location of the building far away from other large structures, allowed for the prevailing breezes to be felt on the site year-round.

Stylistically, the Jefferson Davis Hospital is similar to Bulfinch's 1821 Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston with its five-bay facade with projecting central bay and its classical detailing. In Dowdy's plan for the Jefferson Davis Hospital, he placed the wards at each end of the central corridor - away from the noise and business of the more pubic and clinic spaces. This organization scheme was used in hospitals in Europe, including the Bispebjerg Hospital in Copenhagen, Denmark (M. Nyrop, Architect), and the Munich-Schwabing Hospital in Munich (Richard Schachner, Architect).

A complete set of the original hospital drawings is extant. The basement plan reveals that the lowest level of the building was used for the treatment of African-American patients, with a ward for men and women at the southern end of the double corridor, with a second women's ward under the entry foyer. The plan also illustrates the nurses' dining room, kitchen, drug supply, waiting rooms, offices, toilets, and exam and surgery rooms labeled eye, nose and throat, prenatal, medical, surgical, and skin room. In the central rear projecting bay were a boiler room, ambulance entry, and emergency dressing room. The screened balconies appeared at the first-floor level on either side of the central rear projecting ell. This level also has a medical ward on the south end and a surgical ward on the north. This level also housed the superintendent's office, a parlor, three quiet rooms, storage, toilets and baths, two diet kitchens, a laboratory, and a records room. In the central projection, all were the superintendent's quarters, two rooms for interns and housekeeping, and a staff dining room. The second floor housed private rooms, the women's ward on the south end, and the men's insane ward on the north. The screened balconies were on either side of the central projecting ell. The large roof deck surrounded the third-floor interior spaces on three sides. This floor housed the children's ward, a diet kitchen, storerooms, operating and recovery rooms, and a radiographic and fluoroscopic room.

Local significance of the building:
Listed in National Register of Historic Places in 2005.