the former residence of James Baker, a prominent Houston attorney (and
grandfather to James Baker III, the chief of staff and treasury secretary to
President Reagan).
In 1925, the Hermann Hospital was built four miles south of downtown
Houston on a “tract of soggy land,”^3 isolated and remote. The city of
Houston owned 134 acres of wooded land next to the Hermann Hospital
that had never been developed. In 1943, the MDAF fashioned a proposal of
$500,000 for a cancer hospital, twenty acres adjacent to the Hermann
Hospital, $1 million for new building construction for the Baylor Medical
and Dental schools to relocate from Dallas to Houston, and $100,000 per
annum for ten years for medical research to Baylor. The proposal was
accepted, and construction of the initial buildings began soon after the end
of World War II. By 1948–49, a flurry of construction was occurring “out
in the country,” with hospitals, clinic buildings, and a medical school
rising from the woodlands south of town.
It was a bellwether year in 1954 for the little plot of land. Several major
buildings, including the Baylor Medical School and the M.D. Anderson
Cancer Center, opened. While only fifteen years old, the MDAF had
already distributed $14 million, and somehow had grown to assets of $24
million through shrewd investments and management. The original $19
million had doubled in managed assets and distributions, and the
concentration of gifts for the establishment of a complex of medical
institutions was achieving a kind of miracle in the decade of possibilities.
However impressive the first years of construction were, they are
positively transcended by what stands there now. Now called the Texas
Medical Center (TMC), what started as a 1950s building boom became the
largest medical complex in the world, and is the greatest visual exhibit on
planet earth of what has changed in the world of medicine since the
implant revolution. Skyscraper hospitals, clinic buildings, and
thoroughfares comprise a mini-metropolis that dwarfs most downtowns in
America. It is simply a wonder that medicine has changed so dramatically
in a span of decades.
Today, the TMC occupies 1,345 acres and hosts 280 buildings and 50
million square feet of office space.^4 There are three medical schools
(Baylor, University of Texas-Houston, and University of Texas Medical
Branch) and over nine thousand beds in its many hospitals, which include
Memorial Hermann, Methodist, St. Luke’s, Texas Children’s (the world’s