A Medical Campus in Hyde Park

In May of 1916, Harper's successor, William Pratt Judson, began to advocate for a hospital in Hyde Park. Construction commenced in 1925 and by 1927 it was opened for business. The first clinical departments began with Medicine under the leadership of Dr. Franklin McLean and Surgery under Dr. Dallas B. Phemister.  Pathology, the third department, then straddled clinical and basic sciences. The original Albert Merritt Billings Hospital underwent a rapid expansion of the clinical departments and on the land that lies between 58th and 59th Street and Ellis and Cottage Grove Avenue.

Following the opening of Billings, three new hospitals were added. The Obstetrics and Gynecology department built its own facility on campus as the Chicago Lying-in Hospital. The idea of a lying-in hospital with maternity services was originally the brainchild of famous obstetrician Joseph Bolivar DeLee. DeLee believed a hospital devoted to obstetrics would improve infant mortality rates and the well-being of newborns. The Lying-in Hospital was moved from its location at 51st Street and Martin Luther King Drive, now the home of Provident Hospital. The construction of Lying-in Hospital on campus was followed shortly by the addition of a hospital specifically for children: the Bobs Roberts Hospital.

The last of the original three additions resulted from a collaboration between the Home for Crippled and Destitute Children (HDCC) and the university. The HDCC was originally located at 1653 Maypole Ave and moved to the corner of 59th street and Ellis Avenue. The home joined forces with donors Nancy Adele McElwee and Gertrude Dunn Hicks. The McElwee-Hicks hospital opened in 1931, funded by their generosity, to care for children with orthopedic deformities and other chronic diseases.