Sheboygan's St. Nicholas Hospital had humble beginnings in a home in 1890
SHEBOYGAN — Authorities of the Hospital Sisters of St. Francis in Springfield, Illinois, desiring to extend their work of charity among the sick and afflicted in imitation of their patron, St. Francis of Assissi, sent four Sisters to Sheboygan in 1890 to establish a hospital, a clipping provided by Sheboygan County Historical Research Center said.
The first hospital was a two-story brick building on North Ninth Street, formerly home of the Rev. Strickner.
Year by year, improvements were made to the facilities: a laundry and chapel in 1910; a laboratory and X-ray department in 1916; and the Anna Reiss Home for the Aged in 1918.
It eventually gave way to a modern building erected in 1924.
By 1939, St. Nicholas Hospital and the Anna Reiss Home occupied a full city block off Superior Avenue. In the years that followed, the Anna Reiss Home was closed because of changing regulations, according to the St. Nicholas history page on its website.
A new $400,000 addition to St. Nicholas Hospital was announced in May 1940, the Sheboygan Press reported. The modernization project would commemorate the hospital's Golden Jubilee.
The project included a new building 160 feet in length and five stories in height. The fifth floor would be extended over the entire length of the present building, a Sheboygan Press clipping stated.
New mechanical equipment was also planned in the project. The Press said: "The mechanical equipment includes telautographic doctors' paging system, pneumatic tubes for sending records and messages, two passenger elevators, one service elevator, five dumb waits, one reserved for the pharmacy, one for the laboratory, one each for sterile and unsterile supplies, and one for the diet kitchen. The telephone equipment will be changed to automatic dial type."
Back when Sheboygan Memorial Hospital was built, the Sheboygan Press held a campaign to gather funds for that hospital. The paper ran a similar campaign during the later part of 1940 for St. Nicholas Hospital. By December 1940, they announced that fundraising had garnered $53,000. The front-page article mentioned several donors, including Mr. and Mrs. John P. Reiss, who donated $500 for the cause.
In the early 1970s, the hospital began a comprehensive review of facilities and it was decided to build a new facility.
In 1976, ground was broken for a new Taylor Drive facility, which continues to be used today. The hospital is known today as HSHS St. Nicholas Hospital in Sheboygan.
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According to Sheboygan Press clippings, when patients were moved from the old facility to the new building in 1979, it was in the middle of a February blizzard. All sorts of vehicles were used to transport the patients to the new hospital. A funeral home "limousine" was used to transport babies. Some patients were transported in ambulances and some were even transported to the new building in a Sheboygan Press delivery van.
The old facility on Superior Avenue then became known as St. Nicholas Apartments following a conversion to apartments and is in use today for that purpose.
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Gary C. Klein can be reached at 920-453-5149 or gklein@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter at @leicaman99.
This article originally appeared on Sheboygan Press: Sheboygan hospital St. Nicholas had humble start in a home in 1890
