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Michael R. Allen
We are happy to answer your questions or accept submissions of images, stories or other documents: Email:snodgras@stlouiscityhospital.org
StLouisCityHospital.org started in June 2003 and is updated whenever new content is ready for posting. This website grew out of the work of the St. Louis City Hospital Historical Society, which bravely and successfully fought for the preservation of the hospital from 1994 until the group's dissolution in 2000. Michael R. Allen, who has been actively researching the hospital since 1992, has edited the site since its launch in 2003 and Claire Nowak-Boyd joined the project in March 2004.
Think of this website as a very small part of the possible ways to document the graceful buildings of the City Hospital in St. Louis, Missouri. Everything here is just a selection -- literally, because I have so many items that cannot be adequately displayed online -- of some things one might find useful in considering the lives and deaths of the buildings. Here you will find photographs, creative texts inspired by the City Hospital, images of artifacts and documents, and a basic history of the buildings. The author assumes that you can assemble a meaningful narrative from the items presented here; or, if you are familiar with the historical and geographical context of City Hospital, can connect these items to others in a way that reshapes your conception of the City Hospital. This site might become comprehensive, but makes no aspiration to such an end. After all, the numbers work against any effort to make a comprehensive history. I was born five years before the hospital closed, and never saw the buildings in operation. My concept of City Hospital is heavily rooted in their moribund appearance that December day in 1992 when I passed them and the way they looked on subsequent trips. Thus, my vision of the lifespan fully considers one of abandonment that is leading to renovation, while others will surely consider that of an active social institution being broken down into a mere abandoned complex that has melted further into a rehab project. I try to contemplate ways my vision is informed by others, but cannot admit the other visions into mine. Hopefully, other visions of the lifespan will emerge through items from other people that end up on this site. I also pose this site consciously as one initial point in a bioregional system of abandonment, and thus attempt to make evident the political and cultural significance of City Hospital in relation to other abandoned or neglected structures. If I am guilty of contextualizing the City Hospital before presenting it as itself, so be it; the decay of Saint Louis urgently demands systematic documentation.
- Michael R. Allen
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