Several early drafts of Chapter 1 of Rise of the Modern Hospital included discussion of this proposed facility for St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in Utica. It was designed at the height of early pavilion-ward hospital popularity (and so was true to the type). It was also influenced by Civil War experiences which had created an interest in healthier, temporary construction–impermanent structures let in more fresh air and could be destroyed if hospital diseases (cross-infections) gained a hold. Although the administration building would have been of permanent construction, St. Elizabeth’s ward pavilions were proposed to be built of temporary wooden double-wall construction which could be torn down and rebuilt. That the citizen of a smaller, inland city could propose such a complete facility indicated the extent to which pavilion-ward hospital design permeated the country.
It was also ahead of its time in the inclusion of separate pavilions devoted exclusively to private wards for male and female paying patients. The private rooms had an internal door between every pair of rooms, allowing for a private nurse or family members to occupy one of the rooms while the patient occupied the other. The inclusion of only one small bath/toilet for all 13 private rooms minimized the plumbing (which was considered dangerous as a source of disease-causing bad air) but also made a stay at the hospital very different from the luxuriousness of a hotel or home.
Though the overall hospital layout clearly followed pavilion-ward guidelines, the hospital included a ventilation system that was far more elaborate than Florence Nightingale’s recommended natural ventilation by windows. A grating and freestanding tile exhaust duct riser between every pair of beds, kept the patients aerially separate even though they were physically quite near each other. The designers expected that the judicious placement of heating coils in the supply ducts and in the exhaust ducts would ensure a constant and controlled movement of air. The expectation was that the patients, though in adjacent beds, would remain aerially separated. (It is unlikely that the air would have followed the elaborate ventilation plan indicated by the arrows in the section.) The placement of a large window next to each bed guaranteed a constant supply of fresh air, but would have interfered with the planned flow of air from supply box to in-wall exhaust duct. Several buildings were constructed, but the full facility was never completed according to this overall plan.