• Significance: The former Western Branch of the National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers was founded in 1885. It was the fifth in a a series of 11 branch institutions established between 1867 and 1929. The institutions are considered to be the earliest and most extensive examples of federal government-sponsored and of non-religious planned communities in the country. The scope of training, education, and readjustment activities offered at the Homes are thought to be the earliest federal venture into large scale rehabilitation programs.

The Western Branch Home, now the Department of Veterans Affairs Dwight D. Eisenhower Medical Center (DDE/VAMC) has continuously provided residential and medical care for veterans since 1886. The facility embodies the comprehensive federal policies and concepts of health and rehabilitative care provided in a planned community as they originated after the Civil War and evolved into the first half of the twentieth century. The Western Branch has excellent examples of building and landscape architecture, most notably its fine groups Georgian Revival, late Gothic Revival, and Queen Anne style buildings, surrounded by a park- and campus-like setting. The 213.97-acre site is characterized by rolling terrain, tree-dotted lawns, a man-made lake, and curving roads overlooking the Missouri River. The historic buildings constructed between 1885 and the early 1940s are mostly well-designed and crafted examples of popular period Victorian revival styles executed in brick and stone, with a few wood-frame examples. The work of a notable local architect and builder are represented, as well as that of a nationally important landscape architect. The original planning concept combined civilian and military influences in a planned rehabilitative community. The evolution of the Home into a major regional Veterans Administration medical center in the 1930s is reflected in the building scale and siting.

• Unprocessed Field note material exists for this structure: N736
• Survey number: HABS KS-55
• Building/structure dates: 1885- 1886 Initial Construction