Description
The former Homer G. Phillips Hospital in St. Louis, Missouri was built from 1932 to 1936 and dedicated in 1937. The dedication ceremony included a parade and speech by Harold Ickes, Secretary of Interior and director of the Pubic Works Administration (PWA), which helped fund the hospital.
Initial funds for the hospital came from a bond issue of 1922 for $1,000,000, with an additional $200,000 contributed by the city. These funds remained unused for a decade, however, because of conflict over allocation of the money and location of the facility. Then the Depression hit and the city was unable to afford the project. The Public Works Administration provided the remaining ~$2,000,000 needed to complete the job.
Homer Phillips Hospital was a segregated facility in a highly segregated city, typical of the Jim Crow era. It had been fought for by the African American community, led by attorney Homer Phillips (who was shot and killed before constrution began). The hospital had an illustrious history serving the black people of St. Louis. It replaced an “inadequate and poorly equipped city hospital #2”, with what “… was declared the finest hospital of its kind serving Negroes in the world.” (Globe-Democrat 1937, p 5)…