Erich Mendelsohn’s Maimonides Hospital, now part of the UCSF Mount Zion Hospital, falls into the late period of the architect’s work, after he had relocated to San Francisco and while he was teaching at UC Berkeley. After the end of World War II, Mendelsohn was able to practice architecture again, and this hospital is one of several of his late projects for Jewish organizations. The Maimonides Mount Zion Hospital, founded in 1887 in San Francisco, merged with University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) in 1991, who uses it now as a medical office building.

The complex consists of an entrance building and a patient room wing. One enters the hospital through a one-story lobby at 2356 Sutter Street. The low profile and the ramp stress the building’s horizontal proportions. The nine-story bedtower is located at the very back of the property, and forms a landscaped courtyard between these two components.

The bedtower’s prominent south facade is characterized by half-circular balconies in two sizes, connected by shallow exterior walkways on each floor. The walkways run the entire length of the facade. The north facade receives its expression from the vertical stair, elevator and mechanical ducts enclosures, which offset the horizontal window bands.

The use as a hospital and medical office building required numerous, substantial alterations over the years, such as reconfiguring the patient rooms to examining suites. Alterations were mostly limited to the interior, so the overall building configuration and exterior appearance remains mostly unchanged, with the exception that the originally fully glazed entrance facade was replaced with solid walls and a window band. A cafe pavilion was inserted into the courtyard around 2000. Some portions, such as the staircase, appear unaltered since 1950.

It is not clear if the rooftop deck, as seen in a sketch by Mendelsohn, was ever completed or modified over the years.