New England Hospital for Women and Children
You are here
Dimock Community Health Center (New England Hospital for Women and Children)
1872, Cummings and Sears. 55 Dimock St.
-
Dimock Community Health Center (New England Hospital for Women and Children) (Peter Vanderwarker or Antonina Smith)
At the New England Hospital for Women and Children, women doctors ran a hospital for the first time in New England and the second in the country. Cummings and Sears designed the two earliest structures, Cary Cottage and the Zakrzewska Building. A Stick Style building with a mansard roof, ornate ventilator, and stickwork porch, Cary Cottage was built as a maternity facility where women could be isolated in more sanitary conditions than were available in the typical wards of the period. Adjacent stands the original main building for the hospital, named in honor of Dr. Marie E. Zakrzewska, who founded the institution. Its picturesque treatment also features Stick Style elements as well as polychromatic brickwork. Both buildings reflect the prevailing theories of hospital design, emphasizing domestic scale and character and spacious verandahs for fresh air and sunlight. The two original buildings, symbols of the role of architecture in a patient's recovery, remain remarkably intact.
The complex includes later buildings added during the most important period of
Writing Credits
×
Data
-
Location: Boston, MassachusettsRegional Overviews:Architect:Styles:Materials:
What's Nearby
Citation
Keith N. Morgan, "Dimock Community Health Center (New England Hospital for Women and Children)", [Boston, Massachusetts], SAH Archipedia, eds. Gabrielle Esperdy and Karen Kingsley, Charlottesville: UVaP, 2012—, http://sah-archipedia.org/buildings/MA-01-RX26.
Print Source
Buildings of Massachusetts: Metropolitan Boston, Keith N. Morgan, with Richard M. Candee, Naomi Miller, Roger G. Reed, and contributors. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2009, 251-252.
If SAH Archipedia has been useful to you, please consider supporting it.
SAH Archipedia tells the story of the United States through its buildings, landscapes, and cities. This freely available resource empowers the public with authoritative knowledge that deepens their understanding and appreciation of the built environment. But the Society of Architectural Historians, which created SAH Archipedia with University of Virginia Press, needs your support to maintain the high-caliber research, writing, photography, cartography, editing, design, and programming that make SAH Archipedia a trusted online resource available to all who value the history of place, heritage tourism, and learning.