History
The old hospital building was once home to the 1899, funded and designed by Letitia A. Westgate, at a total cost of $25,000. Westgate was Sycamore's first female physician. Sycamore Hospital, then known as Sycamore Surgical Hospital, was the first hospital in DeKalb County.
In late 1901 the hospital's future was in jeopardy, due to a medical malpractice suit. The city of Sycamore saw that the Sycamore Hospital building could become available on the open market. The city contacted Andrew Carnegie to request a $25,000 grant to purchase and remodel the hospital for use as a library. The city's request for the grant was ultimately approved, albeit for the construction of a new building across the street from the DeKalb County Courthouse.
Westgate left the Sycamore area by 1907 to become the city chemist in Aurora, Illinois. The hospital operated for another ten years but in 1917 the property was acquired by the Elks Club.
Read more about this topic: Old Sycamore Hospital
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Every generation rewrites the past. In easy times history is more or less of an ornamental art, but in times of danger we are driven to the written record by a pressing need to find answers to the riddles of today.... In times of change and danger when there is a quicksand of fear under men’s reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present and get us past that idiot delusion of the exceptional Now that blocks good thinking.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
“Hence poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history, since its statements are rather of the nature of universals, whereas those of history are singulars.”
—Aristotle (384–322 B.C.)
“In the history of the United States, there is no continuity at all. You can cut through it anywhere and nothing on this side of the cut has anything to do with anything on the other side.”
—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)