Wichita General Hospital
Wichita Falls, Wichita County, Texas
Marker Inscription
WICHITA GENERAL HOSPITAL Wichita Falls was a growing town in 1882 as professionals started to arrive looking for opportunities. Dr. Perrigo arrived in 1881 and is believed to be the first doctor to practice in Wichita Falls. In 1909, Dr. Samuel Burnside opened the first modern hospital. As early as 1884, the citizens and physicians of Wichita Falls expressed the need for a county hospital. In 1915, construction finally started on a 40-bed hospital. Local architects Field & Clarkson designed a three-story red brick building. It was named Wichita General Hospital. Wichita General Hospital’s school of nursing opened in December of 1915. By 1918, the new hospital was at its breaking point as the flu epidemic and population growth from the oil boom created a need for a bigger hospital. Construction of a fourth story created 55 more beds. Classroom expansion and office space were the only additions to the hospital until 1940 when buildings surrounding the hospital were purchased to house student nurses, classrooms and supplies. The next major addition to the hospital was in 1956 when expansion of the fourth and fifth floors was completed. In the 1960s, a new front entrance, the Frank Wood Chapel, the Gaines Educational Pavilion, Bridwell Surgical Pavilion and Streich’s Intensive Care Center were constructed. An additional project in 1983 added an infant intensive care unit. By the mid-1980s, community leaders began to consider how to more effectively and efficiently provide health care services and, in 1997, Wichita General merged with Bethania Regional Medical Center to form United Regional Health Care System. By 2011, all services had been consolidated to an expanded campus on 11th street; the Wichita General Facility was razed in 2013. (2014)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Wichita Falls' citizens had called for a county hospital since the 1880s, but construction of the 40-bed Wichita General finally began in 1915, its three-story red-brick design by local architects Field & Clarkson. A school of nursing opened that December, and within three years the flu epidemic and oil-boom population forced a fourth story; decades of additions followed before the hospital merged into United Regional in 1997 and the original building was razed in 2013.
Why it matters
The hospital's century-long growth mirrors how booming early-20th-century towns built the medical and nursing institutions that modern public health demanded.
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Related people
- · Dr. Samuel Burnside
- · Dr. Perrigo
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Cashion School
Wichita Falls, TX
Wichita County built this one-room schoolhouse in 1902 on land donated by H.F. Knippenberg, naming it for county commissioner T.J. Cashion; it opened with a single teacher and twelve students. The 1918 discovery of oil at nearby Burkburnett sent enrollment soaring, and the school expanded through the 1920s to a peak of 286 students. When oil production fell in the mid-1930s the community declined with it, and the school closed by 1943.
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Bethania Hospital
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Riding the oil-boom growth that swelled Wichita Falls to 55,000 residents, doctors Hargrave and Walker opened a clinic and hospital on 11th Street in 1926. In 1934 the Sisters of the Holy Family of Nazareth — a Polish order that had come to America to serve immigrants — bought it and renamed it Bethania Hospital in 1935. Under Mother Marie Delourdes the hospital expanded across decades, trained top-ranked vocational nurses beginning in 1959, and served the city until its 1997 merger into United Regional Health Care.
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