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15 H U N T Denver’s Pioneer Medical Community According to Hill, the county in 1870 relocated its hospital facilities to a building purchased from Dr. John Elsner at Tenth and Stout Streets.11 In May 1873 the county opened its newest building, the first hospital constructed on the current site of Denver Health.12 Stephen Leonard and Tom Noel, in Denver: Mining Camp to Metropolis, report that the new facility served 189 patients in 1874.13 Finally, a new county poor farm opened in Globeville in 1884, possibly on land purchased from Bishop Projectus Machebeuf.14 Most early hospitals were the projects of religious groups. Catholic bishops considered a hospital one of the basic services a well-run diocese provided for its faithful. Bishop Machebeuf started his first medical facility, St. Vincent’s, in 1860 on land he had acquired in Globeville.15 After considerable negotiation, Machebeuf brought in the Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth, Kansas, to run the hospital. Sr. Joanna Bruner was the hospital administrator from 1873 to 1875 before she left to start the Catholic hospital in Laramie and, later, the St. Stephen’s School on the Wind River Arapaho Reservation in Wyoming. She also nursed and was administrator at St. Mary’s in Grand Junction.16 Sr. Francis Xavier Davey served as St. Vincent’s administrator in 1875–1876, and she was succeeded by Sr. Mary Ignatia Nealon.17 At about that time, construction began on a new structure, so the sisters made do with a small house at 1421 Arapahoe, followed by a larger building at Twentysixth and Market Streets in the working-class residential area just north of the red-light district. Renamed St. Joseph Hospital, the new three-story building opened in 1878 on its current site on Humboldt Street,18 on land donated by William Gilpin.19 Over the years the sisters kept meticulous records of patients admitted and of their disposition. Many St. Joseph Hospital patients were Irish Catholics, but the hospital served a cross-section of the community. Because of anti-Catholic feeling in Denver, the sisters had to make nondiscrimination statements in the local newspapers showing that they cared for everyone.20 When the hospital opened its doors in September 1873, the first patient was Irishman Denis O’Morrow, ill with typhoid fever. He died in October.21 One of the first female patients was nine-year-old Maggie Wells, an African American, who came to the hospital on October 11, 1873. The hospital register does not list either a diagnosis or discharge date.22 The second Catholic hospital opened on West Colfax Avenue at Quitman Street in May 1892. Founded and run by the Sisters of St. Anthony, it served 250 patients and cost $175,000.23 Soon Protestant churches and their members began to create their own denominational hospitals. In 1874 the Episcopal Church in the United States appointed John Franklin Spalding its 16 D E N V E R I N S I D E & O U T bishop for Colorado. Bishop Spalding, his wife Lavinia, and their five children moved to Denver, and he began to work toward his dream of an Episcopal hospital for Denver and the Rocky Mountain region.24 Guided by Bishop Spalding, church members purchased the Grandview Hotel on the western plains just off of Federal Boulevard, in the small community of Highlands.25 The hotel was located on four acres adjacent to a small lake. Having failed as both a hotel and an asylum for the insane, it was now available for $7,000. Another $900 purchased the furnishings. Church members raised the initial payment of $2,400, with an additional $1,500 from the sale of two lots bequeathed in the will of Episcopalian congregant Mrs. Tuton. The final payment came from money raised by the Ladies’ Aid Society and a $1,000 donation from J. H. Wyman of New York.26 Two-story St. Luke’s Hospital opened in 1881, with twenty-one rooms and three wards holding up to sixty patients.27 It took both paying and charity cases. From the start, the local Episcopal leadership enlisted women to raise funds and supply most of the daily needs of the new facility. Lavinia Spalding hosted the first meeting of the St. Luke’s Ladies’ Aid Society. The ladies immediately voted her president.28 Over the years the Ladies’ Aid Society had members from the leading families of early Denver. The women represented an ethos that was an integral...

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