The Lost Robert Koch Hospital
A contagious-disease hospital remembered by name even after its original landscape largely disappeared.
Robert Koch Hospital
Robert Koch Hospital belonged to the era when cities isolated patients with tuberculosis and other contagious diseases in specialized institutions away from ordinary hospital wards.
The Story
St. Louis, like other rapidly growing American cities, built specialized institutions to isolate and treat contagious disease. Robert Koch Hospital was named for the German physician and bacteriologist whose work helped establish the germ theory of disease and identify the organism that causes tuberculosis.
The hospital became part of the region's institutional response to tuberculosis, a disease that shaped architecture, public health and everyday life before effective antibiotic treatment. Its story is now harder to read on the landscape than those of the city's surviving hospitals, making the missing location itself part of the story.
What Remains Today
The historic hospital is no longer an intact public-health campus recognizable in the way it once was. This story focuses on locating and interpreting the former site rather than visiting a preserved hospital complex.
Visiting Information
Treat this as a historical-location stop rather than an attraction. Respect current property boundaries and use public streets and sidewalks when examining the former site.
Location
St. Louis, Missouri
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