W.I. Cook Memorial Hospital - Fort Worth, Texas - American Guide Series on Waymarking.com

3. The W. I. COOK MEMORIAL HOSPITAL (visiting hours 2-4., 8-10 p.m.), 1212 W. Lancaster Ave., W. G. Clarkson and Company, architects, was built and endowed by Mrs. W. I. Cook as a memorial to her husband and daughter. The discovery of oil on a west Texas ranch enabled her to realize her ambition to build a perfectly equipped hospital for the benefit of needy women. It is built in Italian Renaissance style, of Indiana limestone, with a green tile roof. The reception room has Italian travertine walls, with heavy walnut beams across a gold-leaf ceiling; its quiet beauty is the motif of the building.

TEXAS - A GUIDE TO THE LONE STAR STATE, 1940 p 263

The roots of the former Cook Children's Hospital go back to January 29, 1929, when W. I. Cook Memorial Hospital opened at 1212 West Lancaster Street in Fort Worth. The original hospital, designed in Italian Renaissance architecture, had 55 beds. Mrs. Missouri Matilda Nail Cook dedicated the oil royalties from the Cook Ranch near Albany, Texas, to build and sustain the hospital's mission. When the polio epidemic was spreading in the United States in 1952, the board of trustees of W. I. Cook Memorial Hospital studied the special needs of children, voted to expand the facility to 72 beds with a special grant from the Tom B. Owens Trust, and changed its mission to care exclusively for the needs of children. Thus, the trustees renamed the facility Cook Children's Hospital, which continued to operate independently until the merger.