Built in 1921, Colonels Row housed the commanding officers at Fitzsimons until the post permanently closed in 1999. The stucco exterior and wide overhanging eaves with red clay tiles reflect the Mission Revival architectural style indicative of the original Fitzsimons Army Medical Center. In 1937, Commanding Officer Colonel Carroll D. Buck (commander 1931-1941) oversaw the completion of the permanent hospital, Building 500, as Fitzsimons entered a new era of medicine. Colonels Row's connection to military medicine continued when Anschutz Medical Campus completed the Colonels Row project in January 2020 which restored and converted one of the duplex structures as a single living space for veteran patients receiving treatment at the Marcus Institute for Brain Health.

Originally named U.S. Army General Hospital No. 21, a War Department directive on June 26, 1920, renamed the hospital Fitzsimons General Hospital after the first fallen United States Army medical officer Lieutenant William Thomas Fitzsimons. Lt. Fitzsimons graduated from the school of medicine at the University of Kansas in 1912 and specialized in surgery at Roosevelt Hospital in New York City. Lt. Fitzsimons had his first overseas assignment with the American Women’s War Hospital at Paignton, England, and his last on duty at base hospital No. 5 in Dornes-Comiers, France September 4, 1918.¹ Commanding Officer Colonel William Harlow opened Fitzsimons General Hospital No. 21 in 1918 and the hospital commanders that followed occupied colonels row and marshaled Fitzsimons General Hospital into eras of stability and growth, and professional education.  

Stability and Growth (1920 – 1940)  

Col. Paul Hutton as commander from 1923 to 1929 expanded the hospital with construction of several buildings making Fitzsimons the “largest active military hospital in the world and the largest tuberculosis hospital in the United States."³ Under Col. Hutton, Fitzsimons prospered through stability diversifying hospital services to include neuropsychiatry, physiotherapy, and cardiovascular treatments.  

While Fitzsimons General Hospital under Col. Hutton in the 1920s proved stalwart, Col. Carroll D. Buck, commander from 1930 – 1941, worked against imminent closure to mobilize renovations and construction of permanent buildings at Fitzsimons. Col. Buck led the initial preparations for the main hospital building and focused on modernizing medical and surgical facilities. Modernization equipped the laboratory to handle pathology, bacteriology, chemical analyses in conjunction with therapeutic treatments involving active and passive massage, directed exercise, electro-therapy, hydrotherapy, and heliotherapy.  

Under Col. Buck Fitzsimons not only modernized medical and surgical buildings, but he also economized the self-sustaining post by expanding the Fitzsimons Technician’s School, employing civilians for construction, and constructing permanent living quarters for nurses and medical personnel.  

Professional Education (1960 – 1970) 

Executive officer Col. O. Elliot Ursin, MC emphasized Fitzsimons’ dedication to its teaching and professional educational programs in the 1960s by training personnel through the department of medicine, surgery, neuropsychiatry, and hospital clinics. The department of medicine installed the Elema-Schoander High Speed Serial Graph which produced X-ray films at the rate of 12 per second during angiocardiography to evaluate patients for cardiovascular surgery. Col. Ursin’s emphasis on teaching programs expanded the Army Nurse Health Program through preventative medicine services to maintain and control Tuberculosis and “instill public health agencies and sanitary inspections throughout the post.”²  Fitzsimons sent a significant number of trained American medical personnel to Vietnam in 1968, and the same year over 100 physicians were receiving “intern or residency training in” medicine, surgery, pathology, and radiology.²  

1. Stewart, John S. The Story of a Great Institution, 1918-1938. No. 1 Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States, 1938.  
2. “Professional Education.” The Stethoscope. October 13, 1968 Vol. 25, No. 35.  
3. Payne, Emily Thompson. “Fitzsimons General Hospital, Neuropsychiatric Ward.” Historic American Buildings Survey. August 2009. 
4. Colorado Welcomes You to Fitzsimons General Hospital Guide. 1961