Designed by Kingston architect William Newlands and known as the Nurses’ Home, the hospital erected the residence in 1903-4 as the first permanent accommodation for nursing students. Intended to house 26 nurses, it replaced earlier accommodations in the hospital itself, close to the wards and possible contagion from patients.
This impressive beaux-arts-style limestone building with its commanding columned portico and high ceilings was meant to attract respectable, unmarried young women to nursing and to assure parents that their daughters would be adequately supervised.
Designated a National Historic Site in 1998 and now home to the Museum of Health Care, the Ann Baillie Building continues as a symbol of the nursing profession’s struggles for recognition and nurses’ contribution to health care in the community and hospital.
