The day after the bombing of June 6, 1944, the city of Saint-Lô was destroyed. Nearly 97% and the hospital-hospice, like all public buildings, is in ruins. In June 1945, General Eisenhower proposed to the mayor of the city, Georges Lavalley, to participate in the construction of a "small memorial" for American soldiers and inhabitants of the region. It was ultimately to help rebuild the hospital that the American Aid to France organized in 1946-47 a private fundraiser in the United States. At the end of 1946, the French Ministries of Public Health, Interior and Reconstruction approved the construction of this hospital, which was to be the most modern in Europe. Inaugurated in 1956, the Memorial Hospital is the prototype of the base-tower hospital. It is characterized by a functionalist and "humanist" architecture - modular, it is primarily based on the well-being of users - and by its revolutionary operating block. The result of a close collaboration between architect Paul Nelson and painter Fernand Léger, it is an example of the integration of plastic arts into architecture during the Reconstruction. Its structure, designed to adapt to technical advances and the evolution of patient management methods, has made it a reference for the hospital architecture of the second half of the twentieth century. Today the building still evolves and looks towards the future.