Spaces of healthcare and hospitals in the Late Ottoman Empire and Early Turkish Republic

This dissertation examines the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic through the lens of healthcare architecture. It explores the social, political, cultural forces of the time, and the individuals, particularly the architects, who made decisions about the hospitals and healthcare institutions in Istanbul and Ankara. The four case studies of healthcare institutions examined here are: the British Seamen's Hospital in Istanbul, the American Hospital in Istanbul, the Central Hygiene Institute complex in Ankara, and the Admiral Bristol School of Nursing Nurses' Home in Istanbul. As an architectural history, this dissertation explores these examples of healthcare architecture to investigate the many different social, cultural, political, and economic factors which shaped these projects. The scope of the individuals examined in this thesis include a diverse group of architects from Britain, Austria, the United States, and Turkey, as well as the different groups of patrons, physicians, nurses, faith leaders, diplomats, and political actors who influenced the establishment and development of healthcare institutions. The individuals responsible for the examples of healthcare architecture studied in this dissertation worked in the cosmopolitan environment of the late Ottoman Empire (1839-1922) and the early decades of the Turkish Republic (1923-1950). The stylistic and typological choices made for these four building projects reflect the complex dynamics surrounding architectural output of this transformative era and highlight the intellectual and physical mobility of the individuals responsible for them as well as the impact of different architectural movements such as modernism. In addition to a detailed formal and typological analysis of four examples of healthcare architecture, this thesis explains the transformations that happened in healthcare institutions of the time, their functions, and what they meant to those who financed, built, and used them. A vast number of primary sources from archives in Turkey, the US and UK have been used in this thesis including correspondence, periodicals, diaries, parliamentary records, diplomatic exchanges, and architectural plans, some which are presented here for the first time. Oral histories of healthcare workers who lived and worked in these buildings were also conducted to learn more about the later lives of these buildings. Finally, this dissertation and the architectural projects presented here argue for a more nuanced and critical re-assessment of post-colonial theory which has tended to ignore Ottoman agency in the decision-making processes and power dynamics that shaped healthcare architecture in this era.