Today's New England Hospital is a whole complex of buildings and 20,000 hospital admissions a year. The building where Maria Zakrzewska founded the hospital for women and children is still receiving patients. Visitors from Poland can see it from the outside. It is worth taking an unusual and sentimental trip there to see how the memory of the Polish doctor, founder and founder of this institution, is cherished.

New England Hospital for Women and Children - the hospital of a Polish doctor
The building will intrigue not only visitors from the Old Continent, but also Americans themselves. Because of its original style, it was listed in 1985 on the National Register of Historic Places, the official register of cultural resources of the United States, and six years later on the government's National Historic Landmark inventory. It contains 2,500 sites of special significance, which also include natural monuments or places associated with prominent figures. Thus, the Zakrzewska Building, as the building is commonly referred to, is by all means special and enjoys a well-deserved reputation.

On the outskirts of Boston, but at the heart of its needs
The hospital was built in 1872 on the outskirts of Boston, in partly rural Roxbury. The area was then called a tram suburb, or suburb, where a tram line was brought in to supply the metropolis with labour. And this fact already says a lot about the local community, for whom the Zakrzewska Building has become a special place.

The building was designed by two architects, Charles Amos Cummings and Willard T. Sears, who later became famous as the creators of public buildings recognised throughout the state of Massachusetts. The building was erected in a style reminiscent of neo-Gothic buildings, although indeed a variation virtually unheard of in Europe. In America, this style is referred to as stick style because of the wooden slats, which were intended to be reminiscent of the half-timbered buildings of the Middle Ages, and the characteristic diagonal beams, or braces, which were part of the styling. The numerous details - especially in the ornamentation of the verandas, soffits and the obligatory corner turret - make the construction evoke associations with the sacred architecture of Scandinavia as well as the palaces of the Victorian era.

Avant-garde hospital and women's healthcare
Behind the eclecticism is a functional volume. The three-storey, predominantly brick building draws attention to itself with its ornate timber-framed attic at the front, although this cobbled roof is evidence of the use of a modern, for the time, framing technique (balloon framing). Most importantly, however, according to the detailed instructions of the originator and founder, Maria Zakrzewska, it was to be an innovative hospital, and the architects incorporated this perfectly into the design.

The intimate edifice - which consisted of a dozen or so rooms as well as treatment and teaching rooms - is still associated with a friendly, almost homely place. This, according to Zakrzewska, was an important part of the therapy. It combined all the features of the science-based hospital architecture of the time. It featured both spaces for the laboratory - a rarity in the United States at the time - and the aforementioned verandas, which, like the sanatorium, were soon filled with convalescent patients.

Zakrzewska collaborated with one of the world's pioneers of antisepsis, Hungarian-born Ignaz Semmelweis, and instructed the architects to design the operating theatres, passageways, toilets, bathrooms or the dissecting room in such a way as to minimise the risk of hospital-acquired infections. This was an absolute novelty.

Dr Maria Zakrzewska and feminism
What else will the tourist see? The discerning eye will stop at the details that testify to the welcoming nature of this architecture. And no wonder, the hospital was set up by a woman for women and their children. The guiding idea of Zakrzewska, known as Dr Zak, was to create a place where a handful of American female doctors would help patients regardless of their wealth or skin colour. Indeed, this was a time when only in America could women receive a medical degree, as European medical faculties were closed to them.

Unfortunately, overseas too, the reality was not conducive to the development of ladies. Private academies, including homeopathic schools, which for a long time in the USA offered medical degrees to their graduates, were profit-oriented and accepted all applicants. This meant that male and female graduates were often unprepared for their profession. The American reality was complemented by customs, patterns, stereotypes and in very many centres, especially rural ones, a woman simply could not practise.

Dr Zak was committed to getting women active and founded the New England Hospital for Women and Children as early as 1862. Initially, the hospital operated from her home, but over time new premises were added to make its final haven in Roxbury. However, the staff were always female. With the erection of the new building, female students also arrived and at the Zakrzewska Building women were not only treated but also educated. Dr. Zak's female alumnae later formed the vanguard of American health care; among others, the first American surgeon and a black nurse gained their professions here.

Dr. Maria Zakrzewska - a talented citizen of the world
And all this was to be done by a Polish woman? If this had been about her younger brother, an engineer who had made his career in America, the answer would have been simple. Herman felt he was an heir to the tradition of the white eagle. Maria was different. Throughout her adult life, she identified herself with medicine, proclaiming the principle that science has no sex. So, most likely, when asked about her origins, she would reply that a scientist has no nationality. Nevertheless, Polishness as a modus vivendi accompanied her throughout her life.

She was born in 1829 in Berlin, into the family of Marcin Zakrzewski, a Pole who, like his father, fought the Prussian administration for his rightful place and dignity. This ethos was taken up by Maria, who at the age of 21 became chief midwife at Berlin's Charité hospital. A stunning promotion and a spectacular failure. Six months later - due to behind-the-scenes games fueled by, among other things, Prussian nationalism - she resigned. On the verge of adulthood, she achieved all she could in Europe and headed overseas.

In New York, after many adventures, she met the first certified doctor in modern history, Elizabeth Blackwell, and thanks to her support, in 1853 she became one of the first dozen or so female medics in the world. Was she thinking of Poland at the time? Probably not, although it is well known that for decades she did not identify with feminism or abolitionism, yet she did a great deal and is counted among these currents. So there is nothing to prevent us, too, per analogiam, from seeing Dr Zak as a Polish émigré and the New England Hospital for Women and Children as a symbolic representation of her work.