St. Luke's Hospital

The new St. Luke's hospital, on a 4-acre tract of ground extending from the west side of J.C. Nichols parkway at Forty-fourth street to Wornall road on the west, opened March 1, 1923. The 150-bed facility was a modern brick fireproof building, designed in the Georgian tradition by Keene and Simpson, architects. The history of the hospital goes back to 1882 when F. T. Hadlond and 16 other Kansas Citians associated themselves by Articles of Agreement for benevolent, scientific, educational and charitable purposes under the name of The Church Charity Association of Kansas City. An early hospital at Tenth and Campbell streets, All Saints Hospital, was opened May 10, 1885, by the Rt. Rev. Charles Franklin Robertson, bishop of the Episcopal diocese of Missouri, but was closed in the 1890s. The first St. Luke's hospital was established on the second and third floors of a store at Fifth and Delaware streets in October, 1902, as a branch of Episcopalian charities. Furniture and fixtures were gifts of Dr. Herman E. Pearse. (His son-in-law, Dr. E. Lee Miller, was on the first staff of the present St. Luke's). There were 12 beds, a good kitchen, operating room, laboratory facilities, reception room and living quarters for the superintendent of nurses and her two pupils. St. Luke's remained in the Delaware street quarters only a year, and then moved to a house at Fortieth street and Baltimore. In 1906 the hospital was moved to the large brick home of Samuel Scott at the southeast corner of Eleventh and Euclid streets, where it functioned for 17 years. Then the hospital, as pictured, on what was then Mill Creek parkway (now J. C. Nichols parkway) and Wornall road, was built and occupied. The imposing entrance and long flights of stone steps at the east side of the hospital on J. C. Nichols parkway have been removed, and a new building occupies that space. The hospital entrance and large parking space now front on Wornall road. Kansas City Star, April 11, 1970.