From Fitzsimons Army Hospital to the Anschutz Medical Campus

If you drive past the Anschutz Medical Campus in Aurora today, you see hospitals, research towers, and student labs. But the tall older building at its center tells a longer story.

It opened in 1918 as Army General Hospital No. 21, built to treat soldiers with tuberculosis, who were sent west for the dry air and sunshine. In 1920 it was renamed for Lt. William T. Fitzsimons, an Army surgeon and the first American medical officer killed in World War I.

The landmark you notice is Building 500. When it was finished in 1941, it was the largest building in Colorado and the largest hospital the Army had ever built. In 1955 President Dwight Eisenhower had a heart attack while visiting Denver and spent about seven weeks recovering in a suite on its eighth floor, which ran much of the country from that hospital room.

The Army eventually consolidated its medical care elsewhere, and Fitzsimons closed in 1999 through the federal base-closure process. Rather than sit empty, the land became the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus and the Fitzsimons Innovation Community, drawing hospitals, labs, and biotech jobs to Aurora.

Building 500 still stands, restored, with the Eisenhower Suite kept the way it looked in 1955. For visiting details and the fuller history, see History Colorado’s page on the main hospital building.