Ooglijdersgasthuis
F.C. Dondersstraat 65
The ophthalmology hospital in a particularly beautiful building — If you came from the direction of the Biltstraat, you will have seen this building’s left tower coming for a while, as it stares down F.C. Dondersstraat. Now we are on the subject of sight, what exactly went on in the hospice for ‘eye sufferers’?
Ferdinand Cornelis Donders was the first Dutch ophthalmologist. Around about 1850, he set up a clinic for ophthalmology. During the nineteenth century, it expanded into a fully-fledged medical institute with this building as the crown on Donders’ work.
The Ooglijdersgasthuis (Hospice for Needy and Poorly Affluent Eye Sufferers) was built here between 1892 and 1894. The building was renovated and expanded in 1902, 1938 and 1950. Finally, in 1990, the institute of the Ooglijdersgasthuis moved to De Uithof, and the building passed to the Hogeschool Utrecht (University of Applied Sciences). In 1999, the Ooglijdersgasthuis merged with other medical institutions to become the Universitair Medisch Centrum (University Medical Center - UMC) Utrecht.
The former Ooglijdersgasthuis is currently being converted into apartments and homes.
