[1] This soon proved insufficient to meet the demand, and the Council bought the old Royal Infirmary buildings at Infirmary Street, and these together with the Surgical Hospital (the former Royal High School) and the former Surgeons Hall in Surgeons’ Square were opened as the Second City Fever Hospital in 1885.

It was built close to the Edinburgh City (Craiglockhart) Poorhouse, (which later became Greenlea Old People's Home,[3] and was redeveloped in the 1980s as residential housing known as The Steils.

[5] The hospital was built in red sandstone and consisted of fifteen two-storey Nightingale pavilions separated by grassy airing grounds to ensure spacing between wards and give them greater exposure to light.

Until the Second World War, the hospital dealt mainly with measles, typhus, scarlet fever, diphtheria and whooping cough.

Crofton established his academic unit and main clinical base at the City Hospital[5] and pioneered a treatment that demonstrated that pulmonary tuberculosis could be cured by antibiotic therapy.

[11] In 1952 a thoracic surgery unit was established with Mr Andrew Logan as lead surgeon, initially to treat patients with surgically amenable pulmonary tuberculosis.

[5] By the 1950s the introduction of antibiotics, effective immunisation and improved sanitation brought about a changing pattern of infectious disease.

Pavilions were no longer needed for conditions like typhus, scarlet fever, diphtheria and whooping cough, and these beds were reallocated to other specialities.

[5] In 1965 the ear, nose and throat department moved from the Royal Infirmary and in the 1976 a care of the elderly unit was opened.

[5] As a result of the epidemic of HIV/AIDS in Edinburgh an AIDS screening service was set up in the hospital, the first of its kind in the UK.

Streets in the development are named for Sir Henry Littlejohn and Robert Morham, reflecting the history of the hospital.