A Fortune Given Back: How Dr. Simeon Bell Helped Build KU Medical Center

By Diane Euston

  In the last issue of the Telegraph, we learned about Dr. Simeon Bishop Bell’s early years in Kansas Territory that placed him directly in the middle of the violent Border Wars. 

  After settling near Aubry in Johnson County in 1857, Dr. Bell (b. 1820) established himself as a doctor, merchant and outspoken Free-State supporter. His political beliefs made him a target for pro-Confederate bushwhackers.

  The events of January 30, 1865 nearly killed him. That afternoon, guerrilla leader Dan Vaughn rode into Aubry with several men, robbed Bell’s store and set it on fire with the doctor still trapped inside. 

  Bell survived the flames by breathing through a knothole in the wall before finally escaping, only to be struck in the head, taken prisoner and marched toward Missouri under the threat of being hanged. Near the Blue River, Vaughn unexpectedly released him and told him to return home.

  The raid left Bell with little reason to remain in Aubry. His store, medical books and diploma were gone, and years of border violence had finally taken their toll. Rather than simply ending Bell’s story, however, the destruction of everything he had built forced him to begin again—and that fresh start would eventually help shape one of Kansas City’s most important medical institutions.

Rebuilding in Rosedale and Southwest Boulevard

  In 1866, he bought 160 acres of land in Wyandotte County in the Rosedale area and retired from medicine. He cleared timber and planned for his future. He built a home “made of sycamore logs” at present-day Southwest Boulevard and Eaton Street. 

  Yet tragedy struck once again. His beloved wife, Eleanor Taylor Bell, passed away. She was described as a “slender woman” who was “quite the belle” at social gatherings. 

  Her death on January 13, 1866 occurred weeks after the birth of her tenth child. That child, Simeon Bell, Jr., died in October 1866 and was laid to rest next to her.

  She was buried at Union Cemetery, and Dr. Bell was left with four young children to raise: Frederica (b. 1854), Mary (b. 1856), Charles (b. 1858) and Abbie (b. 1863).

  Shortly after his beloved wife’s death, Dr. Bell married Mrs. Margaret Bellis, a native of Ireland. Two additional children, Miranda (b. 1867) and Simeon, Jr. (b. 1870) were born to the couple.

  Under the direction of his second wife, his home in Rosedale became a beautiful place “landscaped with shrubs and trees and lilac hedges, with flowers in profusion.” 

  The marriage didn’t last; in 1873, the couple divorced. She moved close by in Rosedale with their two children.

  Early-on, Dr. Bell operated a general store at Shawnee Road and State Line Road, but his time as a merchant was short-lived.

  Due to the growth of nearby Kansas City, Mo. and the growth of the stockyards, Dr. Bell quickly saw there could be money to be made from his land. In the early 1870s, he began subdividing his property; his first subdivision, coined “Bell’s Addition,” was platted in 1880. 

  Dr. Bell was also an early proponent of good roads; he helped plan a road from the Shawnee Indian Mission up to Argentine. He turned to his own tracts of land in Rosedale and knew it, too, needed a good main road that led to Kansas City.

  “When I first bought my land in 1866, I knew it would never be worth much until it could be reached by good roads,” Dr. Bell later explained. “I set about to have a boulevard built from Kansas City along the Turkey Creek valley, through Wyandotte County and on down to Johnson County.”

  He called it Southwest Boulevard, and it was vital to his later success in building subdivisions across his land. 

  Southwest Boulevard followed the natural course of the creek and ran diagonally through his land. He commented, “[City leaders] laughed at me and made all manner of fun of me.” 

  But city leaders weren’t keen on this idea, preferring straight roads with purpose. Building a road diagonally created issues for sectional lines and government surveys. No one wanted a road going through their farmland; they wanted roads on section lines that didn’t disturb their land.

  Dr. Bell later said, “[Leaders] told me I would have to employ an army of men to keep down the weeds, as nobody would travel over such a crazy road. I told them I would take my chances but they would not even lay out the boulevard.”

  After two petitions, which were signed by the landowners affected, Southwest Boulevard was finally approved. Construction began in 1887.

  Dr. Bell paid the expenses to erect the 100-foot-wide road, and after improvements were made and the road paved, he turned Southwest Boulevard over to the city after what he called “a long, hard fight.” 

  The financial windfalls kept coming; building Southwest Boulevard sparked growth in Rosedale, and he sold 40 acres of land to the Missouri, Kansas, and Texas Railroad for $3,000 an acre.

  That equates to approximately $100,000 an acre in today’s money.

Eleanor Taylor Bell Memorial Hospital

  In 1887, Dr. Bell platted Bell’s Third Subdivision in Rosedale, and as lots became available for purchase, a new project appeared to be on the horizon.

  He cleared the timber and reserved a spot of land he called “College Park” just south of Southwest Boulevard. Due to its elevation well above the city of Rosedale, it had been nicknamed by locals as “Goat Hill.”

  Its creation was prolific. 

  In the Wyandotte Gazette on December 31, 1886, the first clue to this five-acre park was given.  The newspaper reported he planned to give this land to “a powerful church or other organization on which to erect an institution of higher learning of a broad and liberal nature, and which he proposes to endow with a large sum of money as soon as it is established.”

  The goal, Dr. Bell professed, was to “enable every young man and woman in the country” to have access to education “at the least possible expense.” 

 In 1880, the University of Kansas in Lawrence was contemplating building a medical school after adding a “Preparatory Medical Course.” This was the only course available to students until 1899; there appeared to be no way to fund a full medical school in Lawrence.

  Dr. Simeon Bell’s early career in medicine may have been the primary motivator for his next move. College Park in his subdivision remained empty, but he saw a unique opportunity to give it to an institution that would be twofold: it would fulfill his wish to give back to a profession that meant so much to him, and it would certainly create a boom in real estate. 

  On August 24, 1894, Dr. Bell wrote Professor L.E. Sayre, the head of the pharmacy and medical training at KU. In part, the letter reads:

  With this letter I send you a map of Bell’s sub-division of lands. I wish to make some propositions for you and others – looking toward the establishing of a building – first a hospital – and second a medical college in Kansas City, Kansas. . . Said tract is almost as high as Mount Oread. . . A dandy site for an extensive hospital. I will donate College Park for a hospital site and supplement it with thirty to fifty thousand dollars as a “nucleus” of origin for a hospital scheme.

  The deal was too good to be true, and the University of Kansas governing board accepted his gift in September 1894. Additional lots surrounding the area were donated to help raise funds.

  But the plan wasn’t without its issues. Doctors in Topeka weren’t happy, and the people in western Kansas were angry that this new institution would be so far east.

  The Kansas Legislature got involved, and their weariness on the location slowed progress. It was said that Dr. Bell, many times, drove his horse and buggy to Topeka to speak to legislators on the subject.

  The plan was still stuck, so in 1905, Dr. Bell gave the University over 500 acres of farmland in Cass and Jackson Counties, Mo. that could be sold to raise additional funds for the project.

  The legislature approved the plan, and Dr. Bell wished that he was able to name the new hospital. 

  In his early life as a doctor and a married man, Dr. Bell’s beloved wife, Eleanor, lived with him in Columbus, Ohio, where, according to historian Helen M. Sims, they rented a large home so he could attend medical school nearby.

  There, Eleanor Taylor Bell, then only in her early 20’s, “opened their home to 12 other medical students whose room and board charges provided their living expenses.”

  Her devotion to his happiness, his early career, their children, and their future was never forgotten. 

  Dr. Bell told the University of Kansas he wanted it called the Eleanor Taylor Bell Memorial Hospital. 

  His wish was granted, and at the age of 86, Dr. Simeon Bell watched as his dream came true.

  In order to ensure that this university hospital and medical college was successful, three privately-owned schools in the Kansas City area (Kansas City Medical College, the Medico-Chirurgical College and the College of Physicians and Surgeons) merged with the University of Kansas.

  These students from these merged schools were the university’s first medical class.

  Located at 311 Seminary Street, a brick hospital with 24 beds opened in 1906. The first floor was for clinical work, and the top two floors were for hospital wards. 

  A training school for nurses opened in 1907 at 311 College Avenue, near current-day 7th Street and Southwest Boulevard. There was a plan for other buildings, including a surgical hospital, a hospital for women and children, a hospital for diseases and a power plant.

  In 1909, the first graduating class – 16 physicians and four nurses – came out of this Rosedale, Kan. institution. 

  Two years later, a second building, three stories tall, was erected and used as an infirmary; it included rooms for 75 additional patients and a place for crippled children. 

A Threat to Move and the End of an Era

  It certainly seemed as if Dr. Bell was successful in ensuring the longevity of the medical college and hospital, but by 1913, there was a strong movement to remove the school to Topeka, Kan. 

  The argument was that the roads leading to the hospital were uneven, and the hill where the hospital was located, once called “Goat Hill” by the community due to its elevation, made accessibility tough. Smoke and pollution from the nearby railroads were also brought up as issues.

  Dr. Bell was 91 years-old, but he wasn’t about to watch the legislature destroy what he’d built in honor of his wife. He’d fallen and fractured his hip on January 2, 1913, but that wasn’t going to stop him from speaking up against the move to Topeka.

  He wrote to the chancellor of KU on January 10. It read, in part:

  To do this would be a great disappointment to me, inasmuch as it is a complete shattering of my early life-long ambition, and coming now as it does in the ninety-first year of my life, with my body feeble, and my mind lost largely of its former power of concentration, I feel it as a great blow. My life’s ambition and hope have been cast aside, and a large portion of my property, which I and my children have spent so many years in accumulating, has been dissipated. . . Knowing that I am nearing the other side, I earnestly ask that the legislature of 1913 finally and for all time to come to settle the location of the Medical School so that I may, with an unshaken faith, die in peace. And as my last request.

  It was, literally, his dying wish.

  Dr. Simeon Bishop Bell closed his eyes inside his old home off Southwest Boulevard and passed away on January 13, 1913. 

  His letter arrived two days later.

  Dr. Bell’s wish was granted; the legislature agreed the school would remain in Rosedale, and the Kansas Medical College merged with the University of Kansas. A third building was erected in 1915 and included an outpatient clinic.

  He was laid to rest in DeSoto Cemetery, and his six surviving children ensured his first wife, Eleanor Taylor Bell, was with him. They exhumed her body and the bodies of their young children and reinterred them in this quiet, rural spot. 

  Eleanor Bell had been gone from the earth for half his life – 47 years – when he closed his eyes.

  World War I changed the outlook for the hospital and medical college as there was a great need for expansion. The same was true for the roads near Rosedale. Westport and Hudson Avenues were improved and renamed “Rainbow Boulevard” in order “to honor the many Rosedale men who [were] with an ammunition train with the Rainbow division in France.”

A Hospital for the Future

  But the location Dr. Bell carefully selected was impossible for further development. It was time for a change, and Rosedale residents were hell-bent on ensuring that the school stayed in their neighborhood.

  Rosedale residents voted in 1920 to approve a $35,000 bond that would help purchase a new site for the growing campus. In 1922, Rosedale was annexed to Kansas City, Kan.

  Land at 39th and Rainbow Boulevard was purchased, and construction of Bell Memorial Hospital at their new location began in 1924.

  The old buildings were used for several years; the old Eleanor Taylor Bell Memorial Hospital was used as a home for nurses and later as a hospital for diseases. It served several roles for the following decades, and it was last used by the University in the late 1950s.

  “Progress” oftentimes means demolition, especially in Kansas City. The buildings were purchased, and in 1972, the buildings Dr. Simeon Bell fought so hard for were torn to the ground.

  The land was supposed to be transformed into an apartment complex, but this never happened. Today, a grassy mound, partially undeveloped, remains as a small reminder of what used to be.

  One could argue that Dr. Bell’s legacy still survives, as KU Medical Center has developed into a premier institution of 41 acres, 46 buildings and three million square feet of space. Certainly Dr. Simeon Bell wouldn’t have anticipated a campus of this size.

  The building at 39th and Rainbow was erected at the new campus in 1924 and was named Bell Memorial Hospital.

  In 1979, KU Medical Center renamed this building the Franklin D. Murphy Administrative Building after the Dean of School and Medicine. He served from 1948 to 1951. According to KU Medical Center, “The name Bell Hospital switched over to the true hospital building, which still serves as a hospital, now for The University of Kansas Health System.” 

  Dr. Simeon Bell’s bequest is still seen in a plaque inside Bell Hospital Tower at 4000 Cambridge Street where his words remind us of his legacy:

  I hope that this hospital will never be limited to any class or condition; that the sick of every kind will be admitted, white and colored, adults and children; those suffering from contagious diseases as well as those who are not; the well-to-do as private patients and the poor as free or with charges suitable to their financial condition.

  Dr. Simeon Bell’s life had been shaped by loss, violence and more than one narrow escape from death, yet those experiences ultimately led him toward a legacy built on generosity. More than a century after his death, the hospital he envisioned continues to serve the community—a fitting monument to a man who once had everything taken from him, but chose to give so much back.