On Tuesday Night- Disposition of Old Charity Hospital to Be Discussed

              THE SHREVEPORT JOURNAL, TUESDAY, JULY 28, 1953
On Tuesday Night—
Disposition of Old Charity
Hospital to Be Discussed
A plan.for the utilization of the old Charity Hospital
site for a state and city governmental center will be sub-mitted
to the board of directors of the Confederate Memo-rial
Medical Center Tuesday night.
The plan may be one among sev-eral
which the directors will be
[called upon to consider soon now
that the new Confederate Memo-rial
hospital is open, leaving vacant
a valuable parcel of property at
Texas Avenue and Murphy Street.
It will be up to the state operating
through the hospital directors, to
decide what disposition will be
made of the hospital property.
The board will be asked by the
city to dedicate a strip off Murphy
Street at Tuesday night's meeting
to provide right-of-way for a pro-posed
four-lane street under the
long range expressway plans. In a
letter from City Commissioner H.
Lane Mitchell, the city is asking a
30-foot dedication off the west side
of Murphy Street from Texas Ave-nue
north.
W. T. Mayo, chairman, said the
board also will accept bids from
the Shreveport Board of Realtors
on estimates of the value of the
property for sale or lease. The
board also will officially accept the
new Confederate Memorial hospital
from the contractor, J^ A. Jones
Construction Co.
Should the plan for making the
site into a state and city govern-mental
center be adopted, it would
call for the sale by the city of the,
city hall on Milam and Louisiana
and the sale of the city court build-ing
and police headquarters at Cot-ton
and McNeil.
The proposition to be discussed
would call for the city to concen-trate
its business offices and the
police and court business in a
building to be erected on the site;
now occupied by the Charity hos-pital.
This site fronts 420 feet on
Texas Avenue and. extends about
the same distance on Murphy
Street. However eight lots at the
rear of the building, facing on Mar-phy
Street, were purchased later by
the hospital and are now occupied
by the kitchens and dining room
and the boiler room. The rear site
also is occupied by the doctors'
and internes' quarters. The hospital
also owns a parcel of property
across Murphy Street from the
main hospital building. It fronts
104 feet on Murphy and extends 208
feet to Gary Street. Two separate
lots also face Gary Street.
The plan being discussed calls
for the state to lease the doctors
and internes building, a brick struc-ture
with 60 rooms, and the nurses
building, also brick, with 100
rooms, from tHfe Confederate Me-morial
hospital board All the state
offices now occupying some seven
or eight separate locations, and
costing the state a reported $30,-
000 a year, could be moved into the
quarters. Under this arrangement,
citizens doing business with the
state would know where to go to
buy their automobile licenses,
drivers' licenses and pay their in-come
taxes, as well as meeting
other obligations
Supporters of the plan point out
that the site is well within the
downtown area and would relieve
traffic conditions downtown where
parking now is at a premium.
There would be space around the
buildings for 700 or 800 cars.
Another suggestion expected to
receive thought is to offer the site
for a new post office building.