Completed in June 1935 at Shelby Farms, Shelby County Hospital replaced the much older Shelby County Hospital on the workhouse grounds at Jackson Avenue and the County Emergency Hospital, or Isolation Hospital, on Hindman-Ferry Road at the County Cemetery in Frayser. Set on a 65-acre landscaped tract, it was designed for 800 beds, nearly 3 1/2 acres of floor space, and a 600-person chapel. Construction was funded by a 20-year county loan of $397,000 and a federal Public Works Administration grant, providing the $522,000 needed to build it. Architect W.J. Hanker designed the building, with project leadership from Shelby County Commission Chairman E.W. Hale and State PWA Engineer Major Thomas H. Allen. Beginning in 1870, Shelby County had maintained a Poor House on Raleigh Road, or Jackson Avenue, for indigent and ill citizens, and in 1890 that was replaced by a hospital and insane asylum, which this hospital in turn superseded. The building served as the Shelby County Hospital and Health Care Center for two-thirds of a century, from 1935 to 2001, before being reused as office space for county government services and agencies. After demand for beds peaked in 1990, when private nursing homes began accepting indigent patients with government insurance, Shelby County Services Director Peggy W. Edmiston recommended other uses for the building, Shelby County Mayor Jim Rout called for its conversion into an Administrative Center, and the last patient was transferred in August 2001.