St. Paul’s Sanitarium — 1910
by Paula Bosse
St. Paul’s Sanitarium, located at Bryan & Hall (click for larger image)
by Paula Bosse
My posting has been infrequent as of late, due, in part, to obligations concerning a family member’s hospital stay. So, since I have a short time before I have to rush off to run errands and make visits, why not focus on a historic Dallas hospital?
St. Paul’s Sanitarium was opened in a small cottage on Hall Street in 1896 by the Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul, but it soon moved to the new large H. A. Overbeck-designed building on Bryan Street in 1898. In 1927 the name changed to St. Paul’s Hospital, and in 1958, the name changed again, this time to St. Paul Hospital. The imposing building and annex (and whatever other structures were contained in the complex) were demolished in 1968.
Below are several wonderful photographs taken inside the sanitarium around 1910 by one of Dallas’ best photographers, C. E. Arnold. They are from the St. Paul Hospital Collection in the UT Southwestern Library (click links below photos to see info about each picture).
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The nursing station.
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The “Mexican Ward” (as noted on the back of the photograph).
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A patient ward on a screened-in sleeping porch.
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A waiting room.
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The x-ray room.
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The nurses’ library. (I LOVE this photo! Check out the crazy typewriter stand attached to the desk — I’ve never seen anything like that before.)
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The nurses’ dormitory on the top floor.
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And, my favorite, the ominous-looking “mattress sterilization room“ in what appears to be a dungeon.
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UPDATE: Check out some fantastic historic photos of the hospital and its nurses contained in this UT Southwestern Medical Center publication, “St. Paul University Hospital, A Legacy of Caring,” here.
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Top postcard is from the Vincentiana Postcard Collection, Special Collections and Archives, DePaul University Library, Chicago; it can be found here.
Bottom postcard, with the cheerful message from Edna, was found on Flickr, here.
All photographs are from the St. Paul Hospital Collection in the UT Southwestern Library. Other photos from this 1910 collection can be found here. (For fuller descriptions, click the linked text beneath the photos in this post.)
An interesting article on the photographer, Charles Erwin (C. E.) Arnold, and the technique used in capturing his interiors, can be found here.
A historical timeline of St. Paul’s can be found in a PDF here.
Wondering where St. Paul’s Sanitarium was located? It was at Bryan and Hall streets, across from Exall Park. Here is the location, from a 1919 map:
All images larger when clicked.
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Copyright © 2015 Paula Bosse. All Rights Reserved.
Flashback : Dallas 
Great pix & info, Paula – a look at google maps seems to indicate that the intersection of Bryan and Hall no longer exists, and that the site of old St. Paul’s bears no resemblance to what it once was.
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Thanks, Steve. Yeah, it’s hard to believe that the hulking St. Paul buildings were ever in that Bryan Place neighborhood. The equally large and imposing Ursuline school was also nearby.
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Paula — hope this message finds you and also finds you well. Noticed this morning a web post re your award from Preservation Dallas last year. So well deserved. Congrats. David Preziosi is a friend who helps me at historic preservation week in DC annually. I’ve been reading your posts off and on for many years. Always wonderful. Researching St Paul Hospital today just to determine exact location, which I remember as being on Hall from childhood, many trips there including one overnight stay as a very young patient. I am Dallas Aldredge family, the George N. Aldredge branch, living in Austin the past 55 years. Close with cousin Lynn Vogt from the Sawnie Aldredge and book store branch. Swam in the backyard pool at Aldredge House hundreds of times as a child. And we slept over on Christmas Eve; too many grandkids for that tradition to last. Retired lobbyist, working for the Texas Historical Commission the past 10 years. At 72, my memories are still vivid…hopefully not too flawed! Again, thanks for all you do. Vaughn Aldredge
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Thank you, Vaughan! Because my father worked for Sawnie, I’ve known Trip and Amy since.. forever. I’ve never met her, but I’m Facebook friends with Terrell. And YOU even made a (masked) appearance in one of my posts: https://flashbackdallas.com/2017/11/19/highland-park-high-school-photos-from-the-1966-yearbook/
Thanks again for the kind words!
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Very nice write up Paula and great photos! My wife was born at old St. Paul Hospital and she was equally impressed. It is hard to imagine that a large hospital was ever at that location based on what is there today. I know it was because I remember it and I remember taking part in a disaster drill at St. Paul in about 1956 where a bunch of Cub Scouts were used a disaster patients. I got treated for a broken arm and leg and then treated to soda and cookies when the drill was complete. Thanks for the memories.
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Thanks, Danny. I had completely forgotten until after I’d written this that my mother was born there. She remembered the nuns, quite a sight, one imagines, for children not brought up in the Catholic faith.
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I have a photograph of when my great grandmother was there in 1912,it was a very good hospital…and that is what you should realize is that Dallas has had some very good private Hospitals history…..while the public hospitals or county are indeed sad…..this was torn down in the 70’s for the Fox and Jacob area renovations…and that was an old catholic and Italian neighborhood….this is a hand colored Weichal card, it appears that Charles Arnold had taken…while the interior shots are very rare, I have never seen….Catholics made the best hospital workers…..since the spiritual involvement is about care ….
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Arnold’s photographs are remarkable documents, all the more so since they seem to have been done with natural light.
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Here’s an interesting article on Arnold — I had meant to link to it. I’ll do that now: http://bit.ly/1hZeZaX
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Amazing that in the mid 1990’s I had met with Charles Arnolds daughter who was in her 80’s and she old us that she had to hand color many of these old past cards at their home on Swiss ave…
.and that in the 1920 and 30’s they had a hard time with money so Arnold had french doors made and the glass panes that were used, came from his image collections,….. since that size of glass from the developed negatives would match the pane size of the doors….many of the post cards images were lost that way…..as the boxes and boxes of negatives made many nickels of recycled glass at the time, she recalled telling me
…Carl Weichel, who ran the various Drug stores at the time and had paid Arnold to capture these images, was the man responsible for the many first post cards images sold in Dallas drug stores and later other towns and places…. and at the time and Arnold had to have a special camera in box form and a stand, tripod to do this kind of slow work…..with glass negatives…..
The real photo, post cards are also from this era and made from a camera you can carry on the street and this also became the popular couples on a street protraite shot….or single shot s that was in vogue even up to the 1950’s….Very little history has been told of this mans life and yet that is where the first and best cards came from….
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How interesting. Thanks!
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I was born here Feb 11th 1920. thanks my name is
Peter. now 97!!!!. any records?
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Hello, Mr. Plotkin! I found a few mentions of your father and his artworks in the Dallas paper, but nothing lengthy. I did actually see your birth certificate, though (via Ancestry.com), and not only is it missing your first name, it’s missing ANY name! I saw the replacement birth certificate requested from California to add your name. Sounds like that was a story you’ve carried around with you your whole life!
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[…] I posted several photographs by one of Dallas’ top photographers, Charles E. Arnold, and in looking for other photos taken […]
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I looked at the site you recommend and there is still a need to really tell a story that has that dynamic version of how he did do the work he did do when it was a very hard challenge to view and capture such images, he really did not make much money from the adventure and yet captured some 400 images more ore less…..his colored images of Trains on the crest of a ride are by far the best was were his Interuban shots…..
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[…] “St. Paul’s Sanitarium — 1910.” The ominous “mattress sterilization room” in what looks like St. Paul’s dungeon. […]
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[…] “ST. PAUL’S SANITARIUM — 1910.” I love all of the photos of the former Old East Dallas landmark in this post, but there’s one […]
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Was there ever a fire there? I am trying to track down my grandmother’s birth certificate from June 25, 1912. Her info was cryptic, but she said she was born at Mercy Hospital in Dallas and that it burned down and that’s why she has no birth certificate. My grandmother was sketchy with facts but I so much want to confirm who her parents were. I know who she said she thought they were, but I would like to see a birth certificate to confirm. This is the only hospital that “loosely” could be what she was referring to. Can you help? Are there any records?
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I did a quick check of the Dallas Morning News archives and I couldn’t see references to a “Mercy Hospital” in Dallas. There was a 5-alarm fire at St. Paul’s in 1951, but the hospital did not burn down. As far as I know, birth certificates are filed with … the county? Even if the hospital burned down, there would still be a birth certificate on file in a county office. Have you checked out Ancestry.com? Oftentimes you can view a scan of the actual birth certificate. Good luck!
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Paula, thank you so much for these interesting facts about the hospital. My little friend and I used to sneak into the beautiful nun’s garden behind the hospital about 1944 or ’45. We were in the 1st and 2nd grades at San Jacinto Elementary. I lived on Life Oak. There was a pond with wooden swans and lilly pads, flowers, shrubs, grass and tall trees. One day a nun caught us and said we must be the little girls who were scaring her “fishes.” We moved to the front of the hospital where we would slide down those slick marble(?) banisters. Exall Park was another one of our playgrounds of course with swimming in the summer. Two rectangular concrete fish ponds were at Exall and would freeze over in the winter. From your information, I learned two of my children were born at St. Paul’s ’56 & ’57, and my daughter was born at St. Paul ’60. I never knew the name changed.
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[…] man behind the still-standing Dallas County Jail and Criminal Courts Building and the long-gone St. Paul’s Sanitarium), the lodge was built in 1914; the land and the construction of the lodge cost $45,000. […]
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Did They treat Tuberculosis?
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I was born at the old St. Paul in December of 1949 and lived a block away on Bryan St until I was 5 years old. I have memories of my grandfather’s stay at the hospital before he passed away in January of ’64. I learned how to swim at the old concrete pool at Exall as well as horsehoes. My Dad would come home after an all night shift at the Main Post Office, we would walk across the street and swim, play horseshoes, and baseball. Dad would often play dominoes with WWII vets like himself.
Good memories.
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[…] Here is a fantastic article about the sanitarium on Flashback Dallas. […]
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Thank you for sharing this. I am doing Ancestry research and my great great grandfather’s death certificate shows he died here in 1918. It’s so interesting to see pictures inside of what the hospital might have have looked like when he was there. Thank you!
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[…] St. Paul’s Sanatarium (St. Paul’s Hospital), at Bryan and Hall in Dallas, Texas.Image courtesy of Paula Bosse. […]
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