Hot Springs heals. That was the theory, anyway. In 1882, Congress authorized a joint military hospital to exploit the local thermal waters, building the facility on the slope of Hot Springs Mountain and opening the doors in 1887. This marked the first time the Army and Navy shared a medical facility. Soldiers with malaria soaked in hot mud. Doctors prescribed baths like medicine. This was not some luxury spa trip it was grueling, highly regulated military therapy designed to get shattered men back to the front lines. The early wooden barracks eventually gave way to a massive, self-contained medical city.
Walk through Hot Springs today and you cannot miss the towering brick complex looming over Bathhouse Row. That is the 1933 main building. It cost over a million dollars during the height of the Great Depression. The Quartermaster Corps designed it with a mix of Spanish Revival and Art Deco flourishes. It looks like a fortress. Because it was one. During World War II, the hospital went into overdrive, and beds spilled into hallways as casualties from the Pacific and European theaters flooded Arkansas. Doctors here pioneered new treatments for polio and amputations. Helen Keller visited the wounded here in 1945. So did Joe DiMaggio.
But the military eventually pulled out. In 1960, the federal government handed the keys to the State of Arkansas. It became a vocational rehabilitation center, continuing its focus on recovery, though for civilians this time. It finally closed for good in 2019. Now, the massive complex sits empty, a sprawling monument to early military medicine. Its significance lies in this shift. It proved the federal government would invest heavily in the physical rehabilitation of its veterans, using unorthodox natural resources to mend broken bodies.
- T Walker
What Makes Army and Navy General Hospital Historic District Special:
