Images of Hopewell Smallpox Hospital on Porter’s Island, Ottawa. The building opened in in 1913 and had room for 82 patients at its height. Before the hospital was built, Porter’s Island had housed isolation cases during outbreaks in tent hospitals. These conditions discouraged infected individuals from willingly going there without force.
Negative views of isolation on the island also influenced public resistance against the building of a hospital. Until an outbreak of smallpox in 1911, Ottawa citizens instead saw it more fitting that it be used as a public park.
Interestingly, the building’s architect, Frank C. Sullivan, worked on it in close collaboration with Frank Lloyd Wright.