Douglas Hospital

Douglas Hospital, founded in 1903 by registered nurse Elizabeth D. Dickson, was the first hospital built in Douglas and the only hospital in Converse County until 1946. Included in the one-and-a-half-story, residential-style hospital building was a small medical ward, three private patient rooms, and an operating room. The first floor also housed a spacious parlor, dining room, kitchen, and pantry. The second floor was used as residential quarters for Dickson and her staff of nurses. The hospital was operated by Dickson, and later other nurses, until 1946, when the county purchased the equipment and opened a hospital at the former prisoner-of-war camp west of Douglas. A new county hospital was completed in 1951.

The hospital building, located in a residential neighborhood a few blocks east of downtown, resembles a folk Victorian–style house, with an irregular roofline and semi-octagonal wraparound corner porch topped by an octagonal tower with bellcast eaves. The building is roughly square in plan, with multiple hipped roofs from which project not only the tower but a variety of gabled dormers. The entrance is inset on the east facade at the terminus of the wraparound porch. The porch is supported by fluted Classical columns with bases and capitals; a wood railing encloses the porch deck. Fish-scale shingles decorate the walls of the dormers and the tower. The south elevation features a prominent bay window that was originally designed to provide light to the operating room.

An addition to the original hospital building was built circa 1920 to provide more housing for the nursing staff. When the county established its hospital in 1946, the original Douglas Hospital was converted to a residence, as it remains today.