This stone shell is the former Wheatley-Provident Hospital, the city's first medical facility to serve the black community, founded 1916.
The building was originally opened in 1908 or 1910 as the Perry Sanitarium and Training School for Nurses, named for Dr. J. (John) Edward Perry, a black physician no one (like me) has ever heard of.
This is a clip from the Kansas City Public Library site that shows the interior, women working with babies in cribs.
The hospital was replaced by Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Hospital long after it was due, and on June 12, 1972, the last patients of Wheatley-Provident were moved to the newer facility. It was at 2525 Euclid and only lasted 11 years.
I'm having a hard time finding information on the Web about Kansas City's history of segregated hospitals and the development of the existing public health care system we have today.
The place caught the eye of one person at Studio 109 apparently. Know that "someone" is working on connecting the Crossroads and the 18th & Vine districts.To me, the area is a bit of an oasis, since I like the isolation of empty spaces and wrecked buildings; the folks behind our annual Mardi Gras celebration (Dirty Force Brass Knuckle Street Band and Soul Revue, etc.) happen to march themselves from Wyandotte Avenue along 18th Street all the way to the Mutual Musicians Foundation once a year. Connections are organic.
(Remember that heritage march dealy the city did May 3, 2003? That was rather lame, and being faux-created by the government, it died the next year, I believe.)
The kind of real connection between "there and there" is still a very long time coming.
In the meantime, there are some lovely ornamental pear trees across from the old hospital. Plastic is flapping from one, while a mangled shelf pretends to be street sculpture, and broken glass sparkles up from the sidewalk.Anyone with a few million could create quite a living space in the old medical building, though I'm sure it's haunted. It still has the "Assylum" haunted house sign frame on the north side, after all.
3 comments:
does 35 years of vacancy do a lot more damage than it used to, or was the building totally gutted when closed, or am I having a time warp? it looks like it's been empty for 80 years to me not 35 - very cool pix and thoughts as always t.
i think it was that it was used as a haunted house. . .there may have been a fire? it's for sale or lease, in case you have a spare million. that's a guess, the price, but i find that the most useless, neglected places around here are "preserved" and "loved" too much by someone who isn't doing anything but sitting on them.
I'm been by there several times lately as friend works nearby. Cool building! Would be a neat haunted house though I hope more something more permanent. Good eye!
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