DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'm gonna pass it right along to you. McAllen, Texas — a city that didn't even exist until 1904, incorporated just seven years later in 1911. And the moment a town plants its roots in South Texas, the first thing it needs, besides shade and water, is a doctor.
That doctor came in 1906 — Dr. J.B.F. McMillan, the first medical practitioner to hang his shingle in McAllen.
He arrived two years after the city was founded, and you can imagine what that meant out here in the Rio Grande Valley. You were it, Doc. The whole operation.
Then in 1918, Dr. Frank E. Osborn put up a two-story building — pharmacy on the first floor, doctor's offices upstairs.
Practical. Efficient. The kind of setup where you could pick up your medicine without ever leaving the building.
And then there was Dr. Carlos Balli. The first Hispanic physician to open a practice in McAllen, starting in 1920, and he was noted — noted, they say — for making his house calls on horseback.
Think about that. A man riding out to meet his patients wherever they were, on whatever roads or trails existed in 1920 South Texas. That's not just medicine, that's a calling.
Also in 1920, a hospital building was erected, and Dr. J.M. Doss did something clever — he combined his home with an office and a hospital.
The two-story structure had a solarium on both ends of the ground floor and a surgical facility with hospital beds on the upper floor. A doctor who literally lived where he worked, because the work never really stopped. By 1925, McAllen had grown enough to need its first municipal hospital — built on South Broadway, beds for twenty-five patients.
Twenty-five. And it was outgrown almost before the paint dried. So in 1928, a new hospital was completed right here on Main Street.
And here's a detail I love — the old South Broadway building and the new Main Street building were connected by a covered passageway. Two hospitals, one town, linked together like a bridge between what was and what had to be. Growth kept coming, the way it does in the Valley.
An addition in 1954. More additions in 1960, then 1967, then 1973. Each one a response to more people, more medicine, more need.
Decades passed inside those walls — births, surgeries, recoveries, losses. The whole long arc of human life, happening floor by floor in a building on Main Street. In 1993, it was demolished.
Gone. But the marker stands to say it mattered — that the hospital building that stood here for decades was a significant part of the development of health care in McAllen. From Dr.
McMillan riding into a young city in 1906, to a doctor making house calls on horseback in 1920, to a connected pair of buildings growing addition by addition clear into 1973 — this ground held a lot of living. And a lot of surviving.
What the marker says
The city of McAllen was founded in 1904 and incorporated in 1911. The first medical practitioner was Dr. J.B.F. McMillan who arrived in 1906. Dr. Frank E. Osborn built a two story building in 1918 with a pharmacy on the first floor and doctor's offices upstairs. Dr. Carlos Balli, the first Hispanic to open a practice in McAllen, began in 1920 and was noted for making house calls on horseback. A hospital building was erected in 1920. Dr. J. M. Doss combined his home with an office and hospital. The two-story structure featured a solarium on both ends of the ground floor, with a surgical facility and hospital beds on the upper floor. In 1925 the first municipal hospital was built on South Broadway with beds for 25 patients, but was soon outgrown. A new hospital here on Main Street was completed in 1928. The two buildings were connected with a covered passageway. Increased population caused an addition to be built in 1954. More growth and medical advances demanded new additions in 1960, 1967 and 1973. Demolished in 1993, the hospital building that stood here for decades was a significant part of the development of health care in McAllen. Other medical facilities have been added to meet the needs of the area. (1996)