Part of downtown Sycamore’s historic district was created by a woman who broke glass ceilings in DeKalb County decades before the women’s suffrage movement.

Dr. Letitia Westgate – the first woman to practice medicine in DeKalb County, according to the DeKalb County History Center – is the reason the building at the northwest corner of Somonauk and Elm streets exists.

On May 1, 1900, Westgate opened Sycamore Surgical Hospital there, in the building she had constructed for that very purpose.

Denise Moran, a Hampshire resident who published a book about Westgate’s life in October 2025, said Westgate broke multiple glass ceilings by creating the hospital.

“She was the first woman doctor, surgeon, chemist and architect to design, build and run a hospital,” Moran said.

At that time, most surgeries attempted in DeKalb County were performed on kitchen tables, Moran said.

Westgate was born in 1866 and raised on a small farm in Mendota. In 1892, she earned a medical degree from Northwestern University before later moving to Sycamore, where her family then lived, to start her practice.

DeKalb County historian Rob Glover, the director of the DeKalb County History Center’s Joiner History Room, said her practice was essentially the first of its kind for the area.

“She is providing some of the earliest hospital care in the area,” Glover said. “Before her, there really wasn’t a hospital that is what we would recognise as a hospital [in DeKalb County.”

In 1902, during a smallpox epidemic, Westgate vaccinated 120 area residents from the disease.

“One hundred twenty people she vaccinated by herself,” Moran said. “People were sceptical about vaccinations, like some are today. So that’s kind of a relationship between today and the past.”

Sycamore Surgical Hospital wasn’t the home of Westgate’s first practice. She originally worked out of a space on State Street, Moran said. The building that housed the surgical hospital is today the home of DNA Holistic Center, Now Yoga Bliss, tattoo shop KM Studio and Comeback Dance and Fitness.

Although Westgate opened what is considered the first modern hospital in DeKalb County, the doctor had to overcome prejudices against women, Moran wrote in her book.

“Unfortunately, people of the ‘Progressive Era’ (1896-1917) were not progressive enough to appreciate a woman running a medical facility,” Moran wrote. “Letitia was called a meddler, a stormy petrel, and a fiesty chemist.”

She also faced challenges familiar to health care workers today. Moran said that two nurses accused Westgate of killing a patient with an overdose of morphine.

“She had to take them to trial because she was losing patients because of that. So she cleared her name, but unfortunately, ... pretty much after that happened, the patients just dropped off,” Moran said. “That was one big reason the hospital didn’t make it, because even though her name was cleared, she just – people didn’t go to her as often afterwards.”

Westgate, who died in 1945, would later move to Aurora, where she became the city’s first woman chemist, Moran said.

The former Sycamore Hospital building isn’t Westgate’s only contribution to Sycamore’s skyline, however. Moran said Westgate sought funds from a man nicknamed the Patron Saint of Libraries.

“She went to New York with the Mayor of Sycamore and tried to get [Andrew] Carnegie to give money to build a library in Sycamore,” Moran said. “And she did get the grant, but the Sycamore City Council decided to forget the hospital and build a brand new library.”