The hospital was first mooted in 1853. The first site chosen was "Hospital Hill" between Rowan and Mackenzie Streets and behind the present Lister House School of Nursing. The first building was a primitive affair of slab and weatherboard daubed with clay somewhere near the middle of the present Short St - which at the time extended to the brow of the hill behind the Sacred Heart Cathedral site. The new building was greatly need to serve the hundreds of diggers then active on the field. Messrs Vahland and Gezchmann, Architects, designed a new building of stone and brick, the cenre portion of the hospital to hold 100 beds. This centre portion cost 12,000 pounds and was erected in three months. Patients were transferred from the old site on Hospital Hill to the new building in December 1858.Black and White photo negative of the front of the hospital; Notes on the History of "The Bendigo Gold District Hospital"; letters re classification by the National Trust of Australia (Victoria).history, national trust bendigo collection, bendigo, bendigo base hospital, bnedigo hospital, bnedigo gold district hospital