From the Kansas Historic Resources Inventory:
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"Historic Name: University of Kansas - Watkins Hospital
Alternate Name: Twente Hall
Historic Function: Health Care
Subcategory: Hospital
Historic Function Remarks: Built as the student hospital with funds provided by Elizabeth M. Watkins, a local citizen who made sizable donations to the University of the course of twenty years. The building opened in 1932.
Present Function: Education
Subcategory: College
Present Function Remarks: Classrooms/Offices - school of social welfare
Residential/Commercial/Religious Style: Art Deco
Secondary Style:
Barn Type: Not Applicable
Bridge Type: Not Applicable
Physical Description/Remarks: This three-story building is clad in smooth limestone panels and has a hipped roof with red composition shingles. The U-shaped building has wings set at wide, obtuse angles. The hexagonal center tower projects slightly outward from the façade. The four-story tower contains the main entrance, with it single door, sidelights, and transom, paired casement windows at the upper stories, and a large stone panel with St. George slaying the dragon carved in bas relief, designed by Marjorie Whitney. Dentiled bands encircle the tower. A streamlined stepped ornament rises from the apex of the tower roof. The rear façade and the front façades of the wings are very plain with no ornament and only punched window openings. Tinted casement and sliding windows fill the historic window openings. A non-historic circulation block attaches to the east end of the east wing. This block is clad in limestone blocks with glazed passageways between the building and the addition at each story.
Plan Form: Irregular
Commercial Building Type: Not Applicable
Roof Form: Flat
Stories: 3
Condition: Good
Principal Material: Stone
Material and Condition Remarks: stone limestone
Architect/Designer/Builder: Radotinsky, Joseph W.(State Architect), Green, Basil A. (contractor); Whitney, Marjorie (artist)
Year of Construction: 1932
Certainty: Documented
Date Notes:
General Remarks: The bas relief panel was cataloged during the Save Outdoor Sculpture inventory, and can be accessed on the Smithsonian Institutions Research Information System [SIRIS] here: St. George and the Dragon."
From the Kansas University Website:
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"Originally Watkins Memorial Hospital, it opened in January 1932 and was built with funds donated by Elizabeth Miller Watkins, a doctor’s daughter and widow of Lawrence banker/financier J.B. Watkins, for whom it was named. The unusual splayed-V design of the stone building, by State Architect Joseph E. Radotinsky, accommodates its site on the edge of the hill Watkins owned.
In March 1974 the larger Watkins Memorial Health Center opened; in May 1974 the former hospital became home to the School of Social Welfare and was renamed for Esther E. Twente (1895-1971), a pioneering social worker, author and educator who joined the faculty in 1937. She had overseen the development of first the department, then the School of Social Welfare. In 2005, after the opening of the Hall Center for the Humanities, Social Welfare expanded into the former Watkins Home, built as a residence for the hospital’s nurses in 1937.
The limestone bas-relief of St. George and the Dragon and the animals, birds and reptiles carved around the front door were designed and created by Professor Marjorie Whitney, chair of the design department, who also created murals of sunflowers and Jayhawks and designed many of the original furnishings. A portion of the mural and some furnishings are exhibited at the health center."