Charleston Naval Hospital Historic District

About this property

The Charleston Naval Hospital Historic District is a portion of the Charleston Navy Base that included a collection of buildings connected with the medical needs of the Navy base. On 2 November 1902 the Bureau of Medicine and Surgery bought 96.5 acres (391,000 m2) of land that was owned by the city of Charleston, South Carolina adjoining the northwest side of the Navy Yard. Later transfers to the Navy Yard reduced the acreage to 43.14 acres (174,600 m2), the number of acres recorded in hospital records as of 1 November 1949. After establishment of the Navy Yard in 1902, the Medical Department activities occupied "hospital" tents near the site of the Marine Corps Post Exchange. In 1905 a Marine Sick Quarters was erected in the same place. During this period, the Medical Officer of the Yard had an office in the Post Office building in Charleston, making a daily trip to the Yard by street car. In 1905, a room in one of the then-existing buildings at the Yard was allotted for use as a Medical Dispensary. On June 26, 1906, Congress appropriated $12,000 to build a Yard Dispensary, but no bids from outside contractors were received, so it was not until December 1908 that a Yard Dispensary was completed by Yard labor. This wooden building was erected on brick piers near the center of the Navy Yard. Later a basement was added which functioned as a dispensary and as a small hospital with many of its patients in tents. Since its beginning, the building was repeatedly enlarged. In 1917 the west wing was added. With the advent of World War I, this 28-bed dispensary, even with the addition of new buildings, was taxed beyond its capacity and was entirely inadequate to meet the hospital needs for the Naval Base, and the increased personnel caused by the establishment of the training camp to the capacity of 5000 men. Emergency facilities in the shape of tents and temporary beds were established in connection with the Naval Dispensary until a total capacity was reached for 120 patients. This was a temporary expedient to meet the circumstances incident to a sudden influx of men without accommodations for the sick. In view of the necessity for a Naval Hospital in this area, a hospital was authorized to be constructed by the NAVAL EMERGENCY FUND ACT A contract was let with the Charleston Engineering & Constructing Co. to build the hospital. Work commenced on June 1, 1917, and the hospital was commissioned on July 31, 1917, in spite of many difficulties encountered in obtaining enough labor and a minor strike among the carpenters. The hospital was the original Naval Hospital built on the site located on the Medical Department Property that was purchased in 1902. The hospital consisted of 19 temporary, wooden buildings with a bed capacity of 250. These buildings included one administration building, one office building, one building for women nurses, nine ward buildings, one galley, a mess hall, garage, laundry, power house, stores house, and recreation hall. These were all one-story buildings, owing to the increased patient load, additional beds were urgently required, and by September 1918 fourteen additional buildings were constructed which increased the bed capacity to 1000 beds. These additional buildings were of wood finished in stucco and were erected south of the hospital reservation. The hospital made use of an ambulance to transport the sick from outlying stations of the Sixth Naval District and from vessels in the harbor to the hospital.

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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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