Unfortunate Girls and Foundlings Home, which Eichelberger founded nearly 20 years earlier. “At this time, they got pregnant, and they weren’t married, or they got pregnant and something happened to boyfriend/ husband, and they’re alone, and they have no means of support” – and they ended up at the Maternity Hospital, Munson said. The facility had a close relationship with the Florence Crittenton Home, which has long served a similar purpose. Many of the patients wouldn’t have been locals, and many of their babies were left orphaned. The hospital at 29th and Court streets also served as a home for the Samaritan Hospital for several years. The Maternity Hospital closed in 1928, and became the Methodist Hospital Nurses’ Home. It was damaged by fire and torn down recently. Hillside HOSPITAL-Sanitorium/ Osteopathic Hospital/ Gordon Memorial Hospital Not finished when he founded the Lutheran Hospital in 1901, S.W. Staads went on to found Hillside Hospital in 1916. The hospital was first located at a house at 1622 W. 19th St.; the hospital opened a brick building in 1919. By 1926, Staads, in failing health, left the business of running hospitals, and Hillside remained vacant until Dr. L.W. Jamiesen used the site for his Sioux City Osteopathic Hospital in 1941. In 1957, it became Gordon Memorial Hospital. In 1975 the hospital became the Gordon Chemical Dependency Center, which would later become Jackson Recovery Center. The brick structure still stands near the corner of W. 19th and West streets, though the medical occupants had left by 1989. It’s not clear what the building is used for today.
Maternity Hospital 30 visitsiouxcity.org
Clockwise from top: Hillside Sanitorium, Gordon Memorial and Detention Hospital
Woodbury County Detention Hospital/ River Heights Tuberculosis Hospital In 1897, John A. Shipman founded the Detention Hospital downtown, just west of City Hall. Downtown being a bustling center of activity, not everyone was happy with the idea of housing people suffering very contagious, fearsome diseases like tuberculosis there. So the decision was made in 1914 to get the patients out of town, to a hospital built on Sawyer’s Bluff, just southeast of downtown.
After it closed, the hospital reopened in 1948 as the River Heights Tuberculosis Hospital after residents in the Woodbury County Home were found to be suffering tuberculosis. It closed in 1960, and reopened later as a state mental institution. The Sawyer’s Bluff area was eliminated with the construction of Lewis Boulevard, and the hospital likely closed sometime around 1970. METHODIST HOSPITAL St. John’s and Samaritan hospitals merged in 1923 to form Methodist Hospital, located at 29th and Douglas. This was the first of Sioux City’s hospital mergers that occurred as earlier hospitals found strength by combining forces. “As medical care improved, as there were cures for diseases, and technology was improving, and surgeries were more and more successful, it got to the point where these hospitals needed to start merging, to improve their care,” Munson said. “They could embark on larger fundraising opportunities, and later on start seeking state grants.” In 1966, the Lutheran and Methodist hospitals merged to form St. Luke’s. The 1924 hospital still stands despite sitting unused since 2005. Last October, a Council Bluffs-based developer announced plans to transform the building into 60 market-rate apartments.