[1] It is affiliated with the University of Otago, Wellington and the medical and health sciences campus is situated adjacent to the main hospital buildings in Mein St.[2] Wellington Hospital has 484 beds, and provides children's health, maternity, surgical and medical services.

Te Wao Nui, child health services, are housed in the Mark Dunajtschik and Dorothy Spotswood Building which opened in 2022.

[9] Built to address the needs of both Māori and pākehā it was one of the first four hospitals established by Governor George Grey.

[12]: 42 [16] Recognition of the need for an isolation ward to care for people with infectious diseases resulted in the acquisition of land off Coromandel St in Newtown and the opening of the first Fever Hospital in 1910.

[9][19] The hospital was decorated with 18 nursery rhyme murals made of Royal Doulton tiles which cost £800 at the time (equivalent to NZD $60,000 in 2021).

[12]: 85 [26] During the war the hospital experienced waiting lists, a shortage of staff and an influx of military patients; a soldiers' ward block was opened in 1941.

New specialties needed to be accommodated: neurology, coronary care, renal dialysis, respiratory research, vascular surgery, radiotherapy and nuclear medicine.

[12]: 112–113  There was the projected population and needs of the Hutt Valley, Porirua and the Kapiti area and the inclusion of a clinical school to train medical students.

[12]: 113 In the late 1950s there was such an urgent need for new operating theatres and beds for surgical patients that a new building with these facilities opened.

[36] The nursery rhyme tiles were removed from the old building and re-erected by the Wellington Hospital Royal Doulton Mural Preservation Trust Inc. in 1992.

Local property developers Mark Dunajtschik and Dorothy Spotswood donated $53 million towards construction of the new building.

[48]: 25  In addition to raising funds to construct the chapel many of the fixtures and fittings, such as pews, kneelers, a lecturn and font, were also donated.

[48]: 29 A notable feature of the building was the stained-glass windows in the north wall designed by Beverley Shore Bennett and Martin Roestenburg.

[48]: 41–42  The subjects of and depictions in the windows were varied: saints and apostles, Saint Fabiola, Florence Nightingale's lamp, the New Zealand Registered Nurses (NZRN) badge, the staff and snake of Asclepius, the original hospital at Pipitea St, the 1981 centennial of the hospital, the centenary of the School of Nursing in 1983, and the St John Ambulance which incorporated Māori kowhaiwhai pattern and the mangopare (hammerhead shark) motif.

[50] The stained-glass windows were removed before demolition and stored until 2010 when most were re-installed by Olaf Wehr-Candler in the chapel in the new hospital building.