CSU Buildings and Grounds History

Veterinary Hospital, 1925

From CSU's Sense of Place:  A Campus History of Colorado's Land-Grant University, by James E. Hansen, Gordon A. Hazard, and Linda M. Meyer.  Fort Collins, CO:  Colorado State University, 2018.

Architect - Eugene G. Groves

From its opening in October 1920 until the spring of 1950, this structure served as the Veterinary Hospital.  Architect Eugene G. Groves designed the building to replace the original five buildings that stood along West Laurel Street that had served as the College’s veterinary hospital since 1907.  This would be the first of many buildings to grace the campus that would be designed by Eugene G. Groves.

The new hospital had classrooms on the second floor of the north wing.  The first floor of the north wing housed the hospital section that included an operating room equipped with a state-of-the-art Bradwood mechanical operating table designed to handle large animals.  The tiered-seat structure in the clinical amphitheater was movable to allow viewing of the surgeries from different angles.  The operating room also had a small animal operating table, instrument table, an autoclave sterilizer, and an overhead track designed to assist in moving anesthetized large animals by means of a sling.  They could easily be moved from the operating room to the recuperation stalls in the south wing of the building.  Adjoining the operating room were the drug and instrument room, x-ray and photographic rooms.

The south wing also featured isolation stalls which opened only to the outside and accommodated large animals afflicted with contagious diseases.  The second floor was the hay loft to provide feed for large animals in the stalls below.  The south wing also housed a ward for small animals.  This ward was fitted with steel cages, concrete floors, watering troughs, and a white enamel bathtub for bathing small animals.

The west wing contained the Anatomy Laboratory and had several five-foot-deep tanks along its north wall filled with embalming fluid and tagged specimens alongside.  At the extreme west end of the building was an incinerator where all refuse from the building was burned.

In 1935, a remodeling was done to the original building and a new west wing for treating large animals was constructed.  The south wing that was originally used as a large and small animal ward was remodeled into wards for treating small animals as well as an office and an X-ray room.  The original hay loft over the south wing was made into a large classroom that could accommodate all the veterinary students at one time.  In 1939, additional barns were constructed as the hospital complex grew.  A permanent amphitheater was constructed in the operating room in late 1939.

In 1950, the new Glover Veterinary Hospital replaced this hospital complex as the main Veterinary facility on campus.  Now called the “Veterinary Science Building”, the old hospital was remodeled in the summer of 1951 and taken over by the Departments of Anatomy and Physiology.  Two more additions were made in 1961 and 1967 as the old hospital building continued to serve the needs of the campus.

Most of the old veterinary hospital barn structure that stood between the old hospital building and the Glover Hospital was demolished in 1980.  One small portion on the north end continued to stand until it was removed in 1982 to make room for the upcoming expansion of the Glover Building and upgrading its facilities for the College of Engineering and the Office of Telecommunications.  The opening of the Natural and Environmental Sciences Building in October 1994 allowed this building to be vacated.  During the summer of 1995, the old hospital building was razed.  This cleared the site to be landscaped into a small quadrangle that became the Water Plaza during the summer of 2000.