Find of the Month

Each month we highlight interesting, important, and odd items from our collection, along with the stories they tell.

Most recent Find of the Month

April 2025 - Emergency hospital

The triangular building at Fourth and Yesler was originally envisioned to house a jail, emergency hospital, and municipal courtroom, funded by a bond issue passed by voters in 1904. The Police Department, Health Department, and a stable were all added to the building plans over the next couple of years. When the building opened in 1909, it was immediately crowded with the many overlapping city offices and functions.

By 1914 the hospital was bursting at the seams and the Commissioner of Health, Dr. J.E. Crichton, wrote a letter to City Council pleading for help.

The hospital originally intended as an emergency hospital only has been forced from time to time to extend assistance to those suffering from many difficulties other than those generally considered emergency cases. Thus the hospital has taken care of many cases of insanity, delirium tremens, acute and chronic alcoholism, as well as very many case of ordinary illnesses and surgical troubles among the poor of this city… Many nights every single bed is occupied and we have crowded patients into every conceivable place. Today it can no longer be considered as an Emergency Hospital, because if we were to have a considerable accident we would not be able to provide necessary beds.

Crichton continued, “An emergency hospital, in a city the size of Seattle, should have in reserve every minute of the day not less than twenty (20) beds.” He listed numerous incidents where a large number of patients were brought in at once, including a streetcar wreck, a collapsed gangplank on Colman Dock, a balcony failure at the armory, and a fire at the Seattle Times plant that led to multiple firemen being overcome with gas.

A nurses’ dormitory had already been moved to make more room for the hospital, but Crichton argued that city offices unrelated to the Health Department should shift to other buildings to make way for more beds. “If the city is to take care of its emergency sick and injured, it will be absolutely necessary to afford the hospital more space. We are at this time refusing admittance to some cases which, for humanity’s sake at least, should have care.”

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