After just a short time, a municipal hospital in Nuremberg that had opened in 1845 no longer seemed to meet the requirements. Modeled on the Hamburg hospital in Eppendorf, which opened in 1888, the building was constructed in pavilion style starting in 1894. The building site was located on the outskirts of the city at the time, just a few hundred meters north of the former St. John's leprosarium.
Neues Allgemeines Krankenhaus der Stadt Nürnberg, Stadtbauamt Nürnberg, 1896, in: Festschrift zur Eröffnung des neuen Krankenhauses der Stadt Nürnberg, ed. by Städtische Kollegien, Nuremberg 1898.