Decidedly Grim

Today’s Remote Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

Hermann Hospital, 1925

When philanthropist George H. Hermann died in 1914, he devoted a large portion of his $2.6m estate for building and maintaining a hospital for the poor and sick of Houston. Although Hermann did not specify any location for the hospital in his will, there is evidence that Hermann had in fact chosen a site downtown, near his family home and accessible to the poor, for whom transportation was a problem. The new trustees tasked with building the hospital decided that location was too small and began construction on the far outskirts of town. Probably not coincidentally, the new location was near the wealthy white neighborhoods that were being built outside Houston. One nearby subdivision was being developed by one of the hospital’s new trustees. A second trustee had close friends and family living relatively close to the substitute site. Though convenient for these men, the location was isolated from most of the city. It was a place so remote that, when the hospital bulding was finally completed in 1925, it had to be ringed with a hurricane fence to keep out the wolves, who were attracted by the odor of the sick and dying.

Culled from: First, Do No Harm

Facts