Ireland Army Hospital received its first patient in April 1957. The $8,500,000 structure had been under construction since 1953 and was the first hospital completed of several ordered by the U.S. Congress.
In the beginning, it was considered one of the most modern medical centers in the country. The nine-story building featured eight operating rooms, one emergency operating room, two delivery rooms, 45 bassinet nursery accommodations, 14 incubators and 17 wards. Twenty five percent of the building was air conditioned. The parking lot could accommodate 535 cars.
Later that year, a small radio station with the call sign KNOX operated from the hospital as an in-house wired network designed to be part of the "bedside network." The station primarily catered to patients in the various wards.
Named after Maj. Gen. Merritte Ireland, surgeon general of the Army from 1918 to 1931 and a chief spokesman for Army medicine until his death in 1952, the hospital expanded and offered additional services in the decades that followed.
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