Building Schools, Making Doctors: Architecture and the Coming of Age of American Physicians

In the late nineteenth century, medical educators intent on transforming American physicians into scientifically trained, elite professionals swiftly recognized the value of medical school design for their reform efforts. Between 1893 and 1940, nearly every medical college in the country rebuilt or substantially renovated its facility. In Building Schools, Making Doctors, Katherine Carroll reveals how the new buildings constructed during this fifty-year period did more than passively house a new system of medical training; they actively participated in defining and promoting a reformed pedagogy, modern science, and the new physician. Interdisciplinary and wide ranging, her study moves architecture from the periphery of medical education to the center, revealing a network of medical educators, architects, and philanthropists who believed that the educational environment itself shaped how students learned and the type of physicians they became. Carroll offers the first comprehensive study of the science and pedagogy formulated by new facilities, the influence of donors and architects, the impact of educational centers on the urban landscape and the local community, and the privileging of white men within the medical profession during this formative period for physicians and medical schools.