The Old Parkland campus on Maple Avenue may be home to more than 100 companies today, but it was once Dallas’ first public hospital.

One of our readers, who identified himself as Josh, wanted to know more about the former hospital’s history, so he asked Curious Texas: What’s the significance and/or history of the Old Parkland on Maple and Oak Lawn avenues? It looks really fancy and nice, but I have no idea what it is.

The question is part of Curious Texas, an ongoing project from The Dallas Morning News that invites you to join in our reporting process.

Drivers along the Dallas North Tollway have probably seen one of the campus’ red-brick buildings with a grand copper dome and thought of the Old Parkland building as quite palatial. In reality, Parkland had a humble beginning as wooden clapboard hospital in 1894.

In 1913, Parkland’s original structure was deemed unsuitable and prominent Dallas figures spent $112,000 to build a new hospital. The three-story building was renamed Woodlawn and became the first brick hospital in Texas. The facility featured high ceilings, spacious sitting rooms, tea parlors and balconies overlooking the bucolic grounds and enough room for 100 patients, The News reported in 1998.

The hospital had a staff of six doctors, five nurses and “a dozen servants of all kinds.” The new building was located at the edge of town that was described as being set far back among tall oak trees and “rolling meadows on all sides,” The News reported in 2006. There was a common belief that the country air would help patients get well.

The firm for the hospital’s original architect, Herbert M. Greene, also designed the original Titche-Goettinger and Neiman Marcus department stores, Texas Scottish Rite Hospital for Children and several buildings on the University of Texas at Austin’s campus.

In the mid-1930s, three new wings, including a psychiatric ward and venereal disease clinic, were added to the hospital with $550,000 in federal funds. A new nurses’ dormitory and power plant were added to the campus as well.

The hospital became known as Parkland because the hospital’s new buildings expanded onto land the city of Dallas bought to build a park.

When Woodlawn’s space couldn’t accommodate Dallas’ growing population, patients were moved to a new Parkland location on Harry Hines Boulevard in 1954, which treated patients until the current Parkland facility opened in 2015. The old hospital continued treating patients with asthma, tuberculosis and emphysema. The Maple Avenue facility also housed a long-term care ward, rehabilitation center and inpatient facility for extremely obese people, The News reported in 1998.

The old hospital closed permanently as a health care facility in 1974 and was taken over by the Dallas County Sheriff’s Department several years later. Under the department’s control, the facility became a work-release jail, photo lab, print shop and depository for old records and uniforms.

The Dallas police and fire departments also used the facility to train new recruits.

Parkland repurchased the site from Dallas County for $2 million in the mid-1990s.

In 2006, Crow Holdings, an investment company operated by Dallas’ Trammell Crow family, and Alliance Residential redeveloped the landmark complex for office space and residences. Alliance paid $16.5 million for the old Parkland property, according to The News’ archives.

Crow Holdings’ headquarters moved into the original Old Parkland hospital building in 2009. A year later, other restored buildings, including the former nurses’ quarters and Woodlawn Hall, reopened.

Cathy Golden, general manager of Old Parkland operations, did not give The News specifics in 2017, but said it was safe to say that its leases were among the priciest in town.

The current 9.5-acre business campus — half of which is communal green space — includes two historic buildings and seven new office buildings, which are home to more than 100 financial investment firms, family offices, public foundations and other companies. The campus also has one building still under construction.

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