Wrecking Ball Watch: The Former Middlesboro Hospital/Elks Building, Middlesboro, Kentucky

A Pandemic has a way of changing everything, even buildings. During the Influenza Pandemic of the early 20th century, the lack of adequate medical care in many Kentucky communities literally  meant life or death for a large portion of the population. Members of the Elks Lodge in Middlesboro, Kentucky, occupants of a new and handsome building, felt the impact of the Pandemic keenly in their small town and in 1918, offered their “large new home” for use as a hospital. That act led to decades of care at what became known as the Middlesboro Hospital, a building now slated for demolition.

In 1920, Dr. Brosheer and Dr. Brummett purchased the four story brick building, a striking expression of Commercial Craftsman architecture.

Over the course of its time as a hospital, the hospital was expanded, with a five bay wide, two-story section built in front of the main building (see above photo). This happened at some point between 1923 and 1931.

In 1923 the building, then known as Brummett-Brosheer Hospital, still had the open arcade wall seen in the 1917 photograph. By 1931, the addition was constructed, with a store, office, and drugstore occupying the newly created spaces at the front of the original building.

Interestingly, the 1931 Sanborn map shows that the Middlesboro Hospital (an enlarged building and a new name!) wasn’t the only hospital in the block. The Evans Hospital, which opened in 1912, was just two buildings down the street.

Eventually, the Middlesboro Hospital had 68 beds with a surgery, x-ray facilities, and an accredited nursing school, the only one at the time in Eastern Kentucky.

Although I wasn’t able to find explicit mention of this, I imagine the Middlesboro Hospital was a segregated facility. In 1920, the Booker T. Washington Hospital, run by Dr. I. H. Miller, opened to treat African American residents of the area.

I wasn’t able to find much information on this wonderful building at all – but when a reader sent me the notice of its planned demolition, I remembered it immediately. Even in its deteriorated state – and this is a case of demolition by neglect – it is an arresting and splendid historic building. (The abstracted swastika like motif between the facade windows is not a sign of Nazi support, but was a very old symbol and ornament often used in pre-War architecture in this county and Europe.)

In 1956, the new Miner’s Hospital (now Middlesboro ARH Hospital) opened, and the Middlesboro Hospital (I presume) then closed. I am not sure what purposes this building served after the mid-20th century, or at what point the decay was left to fester, with spalling bricks, missing terra cotta tiles (and windows), and a tree growing out of the wall at the fourth floor.  I do know that writing this brings me no joy, and if this building had been properly cared for and maintained, it would be an asset to the charming town of Middlesboro, and to Southeast Kentucky.