Veterans Administration Hospital Historic District

Built by the federal government as a hospital for veterans needing long-term care after World War I, this campus in Waco opened on May 6, 1932, after about a year of construction. Its red-brick buildings with clay barrel-tile roofs, cast-stone basements and terra cotta details follow a Mediterranean Revival design. A grand divided boulevard leads to the six-story main building, while patient buildings ring a central oval mall in a Beaux Arts arrangement meant to give residents an open, healthful setting and help contain disease. Construction continued through 1939, and five more patient buildings were added in 1945 for World War II veterans, raising capacity to 2,040. Most interiors were plain and utilitarian, with only two lobbies keeping classical pilasters and terrazzo floors. The district is recognized for its architecture, its place in health care and federal policy, and for showing the Mediterranean Revival style more purely than any other veterans hospital of its era.