Building Blocks
A look back at medical center construction
PHOTOS FROM THE BERNARD BECKER MEDICAL LIBRARY
Construction at the new Kingshighway campus, circa 1913,
required a lot of muscle power—human and mule. The large building
in the background is St. John’s Hospital.
Construction of the McDonnell Medical Sciences Building
in the late 1960s, the product of a $4 million gift from the James S.
McDonnell family in 1966, was called “the most significant advance
made by the Washington University School of Medicine since it was moved
to its present location in 1915.”
An aerial photo of the medical center in 1952 shows construction
of Wohl Hospital and Kingshighway Boulevard as it looked before the Highway
40-US 64 interchange was built.
What a difference 50 years makes: Covering 230 acres,
Washington University Medical Center today is vast and dense. Its institutions
include the Alvin J. Siteman Cancer Center, Barnes-Jewish Hospital, Central
Institute for the Deaf, St. Louis Children’s Hospital and Washington
University School of Medicine.
The Bernard Becker Medical Library, under construction
in 1988, transformed the front entrance of the Cancer Research Building
into an interior wall of the new facility’s seven-story atrium.
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