1932 Conrad Kohrs Memorial Building

St. Peter's Hospital in Helena, Montana.


The beautiful 11th avenue doorway to the Kohrs Memorial wing, now all gone.

In 1932, Mrs. Conrad Kohrs, in memory of her husband, provided more than $100,000.00 for a new surgical wing for St. Peter's Hospital in Helena, Montana.1

Typical of twentieth-century American hospitals, St. Peter’s Hospital in Helena grew as a series of wings and in a combination of styles, but the Mission style dominated the look of the complex until a modernist wing, added in 1957, disrupted the hospital’s architectural harmony. The Conrad Kohrs Memorial wing represented a step in the development of the architecture in Montana, as they revealed the Mission style’s compatibility with other styles, particularly Renaissance Revival architecture. In 1931 New York architect Cass Gilbert, a devotee of Mission architecture, designed a new Mission-style wing endowed by Conrad Kohrs’s widow. It housed a much-needed operating room, obstetrical room, and additional private rooms.2

1. Helena As She Was: Retrieved June 17, 2009 from http://www.helenahistory.org/st_peters_hospital.htm

2. Chacon, Hipolito Rafael. Creating a Mythic Past: Spanish-style Architecture in Montana. Montana The Magazine of Western History, 51 (Autumn 2001), 46-60; Retrieved June 17, 2009 from http://visitmt.com/history/Montana_the_Magazine_of_Western_History/chacon.htm