In this photo from the D'Angelo Library Archives New York Yankee stars Lou Gehrig, on the left, and Herman "Babe" Ruth, on the right, are presenting a new refrigerator to Anna Anderson, a nurse at Kansas City's Children's Mercy Hospital. The refrigerator was purchased with the proceeds from an exhibition game Gehrig and Ruth played at the old Muehlebach Field on October 15, 1927.
Members of the Kansas City University community might recognize the building in the background as the KCU administration building. Children's Mercy Hospital and KCU have parallel histories in Kansas City's historic Northeast.
In 1897 two sisters, Dr. Alice Berry Graham and Dr. Katherine Berry Richardson began providing care for sick children in rented rooms at various locations around downtown Kansas City. In 1903 they moved their "Mercy Hospital-the Hospital for Little People" to a residence at 414 Highland (the current site of KCU's parking lot A). By 1914 the sisters had run out of space. That year they were deeded two acres of land at Independence and Woodland Avenues. Though Dr. Graham would not live to see it, in 1917 the renamed Children's Mercy Hospital had the grand opening of its new building at 1750 Independence Avenue. The year before twelve osteopathic physicians founded the Kansas College of Osteopathy and Surgery which would one day be known as Kansas City University.
Here is the 25th Anniversary celebration of Children's Mercy in 1922. It was about this time that the Kansas City College of Osteopathy and Surgery moved from a building at 15th and Troost to a newly purchased property a few blocks east of CMH at Independence Avenue and Garfield. A large residence there was converted to classrooms and a barn in the back was used as a laboratory. The school's new address became 2105 Independence Avenue. The campus grew to several buildings and a hospital. Here's the layout of the campus in the 1940s.
Eventually a student dormitory and a free-standing library would be added to the campus as well as a clinic building that would span the entire block facing Independence Avenue.
Children's Mercy Hospital moved to its current location on Hospital Hill in 1970 vacating its Independence Avenue property. The university's Alumni Association, anticipating the need for expansion of the campus, purchased the property in 1971 which included the hospital building, the power plant with its distinctive smokestack, the nurse's dormitory (which would become Smith Hall) and a clinic building that would be turned into classrooms (the Annex). They then gifted the 3.5-acre parcel to the university, then known as the Kansas City College of Osteopathic Medicine. The hospital building required extensive renovation and would not be fully occupied until 1979. It signaled the beginning of the campus movement to the north side of Independence Avenue.
Renovated again in 2015/2016 the KCU administration building bears a few traces of what it once was; the stone cherubs over the front door lintel and the cornerstone dedicating the building to Dr. Alice Berry Graham. The people who work there and visit it today might be surprised to know of some of its famous visitors over the years. According to Children's Mercy historian Thomas McCormally in his book For All Children Everywhere, besides Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth, William Boyd who played Hopalong Cassidy, Clayton Moore, the original Lone Ranger, Burt Ward who played Batman's sidekick Robin on TV, Kansas City Chief's quarterback Len Dawson, and comedienne Carol Burnett visited the little patients at the big red brick building that still stand at 1750 Independence Avenue.
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