A Hospital Takes Shape in a Rented Building

The Seattle General Hospital is soon to become one of the recognized charitable institutions of the city, and the efforts of its founders will this week receive additional encouragement by the formation of a woman’s auxiliary. On Wednesday evening a meeting of the benevolent women of the city will be held at 8 o’clock in the lecture room of the First Presbyterian Church, under call of Roger S. Greene, chairman of the hospital executive committee, and the auxiliary will be organized for the purpose of promoting and maintaining in every way, by the thought and sympathy of women, the hospital enterprise.

The formation of an auxiliary will result in material assistance to the board of twenty-five governors, who have followed this plan after the style of the Philadelphia hospitals and other Eastern institutions. Dr. Alison, a member of the executive committee, says the intention is to make up the auxiliary from the women of the various churches, having at least one representative for each church, and in some cases two. The women will be of great help to the matron of the hospital, and will be given general oversight of the building.

Already the executive committee is making noticeable progress toward the establishment and equipment of the hospital. The large building known as the Avon, on the west side of Front Street, near Cedar, has been secured from Dr. P. B. M. Miller for a term of six years at an exceedingly low rental, in consideration of the hospital being located there, and already the structure is being fitted up to meet the requirements of a hospital. The work has been hindered somewhat by the fact that there are yet several tenants in the building whose leases have not yet expired, but in a few days the workmen will be given entire sway.

Not only have the above steps been taken, but benevolent people who have become interested in the undertaking are actively doing whatever they can to forward it. Architects, builders, material men, merchants, mechanics and laborers are all lending a hand, and already, in addition to the work on the building, there have been gathered furnishings sufficient to fit out six or eight rooms. As soon as the building is entirely given over to the executive committee, and the woman’s auxiliary is formed, the Seattle General Hospital seems certain to go forward to a near completion.

The call for the meeting next Wednesday contains the following paragraph:

“In order to enable the women of Seattle and vicinity to do their part in equipping and maintaining this new institution the Woman’s Auxiliary will immediately be organized. It is to be hoped that all the benevolent women of Seattle who can possibly do so will attend. Nothing would seem more necessary for the success of a hospital, which owes its very existence to popular demand and depends upon the sympathies of the general public for support, than that the women should have free scope to plan and work for it. No one so appreciates suffering as woman; no heart is more interested to relieve it; no mind is more fertile or forward than hers to devise and realize ways and means to make hospital patients comfortable and win them back to health. There would certainly seem to be here a fair field for the women of Seattle to display to great advantage the true Seattle traits of good-will, unison, persistence and power.”

The incorporators of the hospital society are: Byron Phelps, E. C. Kilbourne, E. O. Graves, Rev. Dr. Alexander Alison, Rev. David Garrett, Dr. W. F. Taylor, Dr. W. T. Ford, Rev. George H. Lee, Rev. Martin L. Larson, H. O. Henry, Joseph Shippen, W. R. Ballard, William D. Good, Samuel L. Crawford, Griffith Davies, S. Greene, Willis D. Gordon, Maj. W. S. Harlan, Charles H. Black, Andrew Philbrick, Rev. Clark Davis, George A. Virtue, J. S. Goldsmith, George B. Adair.