Letterman General Hospital, Nurses' Quarters, Girard Road & Lincoln Boulevard, Presidio of San Francisco, San Francisco, San Francisco County, CA

Significance: The Nurses' Quarters is significant as one of the few remaining buildings of the historic Letterman General Hospital complex at the Presidio of San Francisco. The hospital, permanently established in 1899, was the first Army general hospital in the U.S., and underwent rapid facilities expansion between 1899-1902 and during World War I. By World War II, the medical complex had become the second largest military hospital in the U.S. The Nurses' Quarters, which also incorporated a kitchen and dining room, served as home to army nurses attending to base soldiers and those returning from the first and second World Wars, the Korean War, as well as California Conservation Corps members during the Depression, and civilian citizens of San Francisco. The Nurses' Quarters, designed in the Spanish Colonial Revival style, were unified visually with the central quadrangle of the Letterman General Hospital complex by their stucco cladding, red tiled roofs, and ornamental porch grillework. Historic photographs, building plans, and records indicate that the earliest (1914) section of the dormitory was building 1020, facing southwest on Lincoln Boulevard. Constructed in six phases between 1914 and 1941, the growth of the Nurses' Quarters reflected that of the hospital and the Presidio, and in a larger sense, paralleled American foreign involvements during the twentieth century.
Unprocessed Field note material exists for this structure: FN-147
Survey number: HABS CA-2269