[Autograph letter on St. Luke’s Hospital letter-sheet].
San Francisco, CA: Warren C. Butler, engraver, 535 Clay St. Letter date 15 June 1878. Illustrated letter-sheet, 8” x 10” (engraving, 5” x 7.25”, titled and signed in image “W. C. Butler, 535 Clay St.”) Autograph letter in ink on verso, 1 p. CONDITION: Good, old folds, with some foxing along one fold line on the image side. A letter by the head of San Francisco’s St. Luke’s Hospital on a rare letter-sheet illustrated with an engraving of the hospital with a substantial caption below. St. Luke’s Hospital was founded in 1871 through the work of the Protestant Episcopal Church and was expressly “open to the sick of all nations and denominations” and “people of all creeds and color.” Originally embracing only seventeen beds, St. Luke’s acquired property in 1874 on Valencia St. and began to develop a larger complex. At the time the hospital was located on San Jose Ave “between 27th and 28th Streets, and near the southern terminus of Valencia Street Cars.” The caption describes in some detail the hospital and its facilities: “We present our readers with a wood-cut of Luke’s Hospital, as far as its buildings are Finished. The engraving shows all the buildings now on the ground except the Kitchen and Laundry, comprising store-rooms, employees’ rooms, and the necessary for living purposes.” Also described are the Female Ward, the Main Building, the Male Ward, and a building for surgical patients; a key identifies five buildings. “For hospital conveniences and care there is no institution in the United States its superior.” Still in operation, St. Luke’s has since been much expanded, remodeled, and rebuilt. Dr. George H. Jenks, the Superintendent of St. Luke’s Hospital, writes here to Mrs. W. C. Burnett, who was President of the St. Luke’s Mile Society. Evidently the Society was assisting in acquiring furnishings for the hospital buildings. Jenks writes: Your girl refused to take the carpet as too heavy. I send it by Mr. Cole. The Rockers arrived and are in the Ward. The small tables also came and are just what we needed. The Laundress has complained about the wringer and I find on inspection that the wringer is worn out. We shall be glad to receive a new one from the Mile Society and would suggest a large size as made and one that will admit large pieces as well as small without special adjustment for the change. Born in New York, Warren C. Butler (1826–1878) was an artist-engraver in Sacramento and San Francisco during the several decades following the Gold Rush. Butler had previously worked as an engraver from 1847 to 1854 in New York City, working for the first two years as a partner in the firm Butler and Strype. He moved to San Francisco around 1855 and worked there until 1860 and after. He is believed to have died in San Francisco. A Butler engraving similar to this one appears on a larger broadside printed by Bacon & Co. of San Francisco, examples of which are held by UC Berkeley and the Huntington. No copies recorded in OCLC. Not in Baird. REFERENCES: Groce and Wallace. The New-York Historical Society’s Dictionary of Artists in America 1564–1860 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1957), p. 101; LaBounty, Woody. “St. Luke’s Hospital: A Closer Look,” at OpenSFHistory online; “A New Hospital,” San Francisco Chronicle (18 June 1871), p. 3; San Francisco Chronicle (21 April 1872), p. 4.
Item #7368
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