{"id":3657,"featured":0,"modified":"2026-04-17 19:40:16","latitude":46.6223499526127937997443950735032558441162109375,"longitude":-112.0373833179473876953125,"title":"Lewis and Clark County Hospital Historic District","subtitle":"","fullsize":"https://mail.historicmt.org/files/fullsize/0422e5b9bb4730683d0da998a018147d.jpg","address":"North Benton Ave between Chert Place and Flagstone Ave.","all_locations":[],"zoom":17,"creator":["Montana Historical Society"],"description":"In 1871, Lewis and Clark County purchased 160 acres two miles north of Helena to create a residential facility for the homeless, infirm, and out of work. The original “poor farm” facilities accommodated eighteen “inmates,” but a new building, constructed in 1885, housed approximately one hundred. The complex also included a superintendent’s residence (1891), a detention hospital (1901), a garden, and a nearly two-acre cemetery. The residents, almost exclusively male and often foreign-born, suffered from such afflictions as alcoholism, tuberculosis, fractures, epilepsy, syphilis, rheumatism, dementia, and eye infections. Women passed through a few times a month, usually to give birth. Although work requirements faded by the 1920s, patients were still encouraged to perform “light labor” in the twelve-acre vegetable gardens and wheat fields. Stays ranged from weeks to decades. For forty-one years (1920-1961), county physician Sid Cooney tended to patients’ daily medical needs. In 1935, a magnitude 6.25 earthquake destroyed the main hospital building, forcing residents to evacuate first to a temporary camp at the fairgrounds, then to St. Peter’s Hospital. Four years later, the Late Deco/Early Moderne style building opened, complete with a surgery room and maternity ward. A reporter visiting the complex in 1944 described it as a “community of persons” who lived “not in squalor or poverty. . .but in clean, comfortable and wholesome surroundings with friendly companionship.” In its final decades, the hospital served mostly elderly residents; in 1961, it formally transitioned to the Cooney Convalescent Home.","sponsor":null,"accessinfo":"public","lede":"","website":"","related_resources":["<a href=\"https://npgallery.nps.gov/GetAsset/1bd3e6fc-e7e4-45e6-8a51-d59755c62d20\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Read more about the Lewis and Clark County Hospital Historic District</a>"],"factoids":[],"files":{"https://mail.historicmt.org/files/fullsize/0422e5b9bb4730683d0da998a018147d.jpg":{"id":6406,"mime-type":"image/jpeg","title":"Lewis and Clark County Hospital","description":"View of facade | Montana State Historic Preservation Office | ca. 2022 | Kate Hampton, photographer","alt":"View of the facade of the Lewis and Clark County Hospital. Shows an image of an Late Deco/Early Modern hospital building with a central projecting entrance with Art Deco detailing, stucco walls, and a flat roof. Double hung windows span across two stories in even rows.","thumbnail":"https://mail.historicmt.org/files/square_thumbnails/0422e5b9bb4730683d0da998a018147d.jpg"},"https://mail.historicmt.org/files/fullsize/f6ad293619ba969b49f808a204dd40ce.jpg":{"id":6407,"mime-type":"image/jpeg","title":"Lewis and Clark County Hospital Cemetery","description":"View of an open grassy field at the site of the original cemetery. | <br />\r\nMontana State Historic Preservation Office | ca. 2022 | Kate Hampton, photographer","alt":"View of an open grassy field at the site of the original cemetery.","thumbnail":"https://mail.historicmt.org/files/square_thumbnails/f6ad293619ba969b49f808a204dd40ce.jpg"}}}