The project began as celebration, not necessity. The Jubilee Committee that raised the funds had no formal connection to the colonial medical establishment; it was a civic gesture, an act of commemoration shaped into brick and mortar. The architects Palmer and Turner — already established in Hong Kong — drew up the plans and oversaw construction. The government provided the land at Barker Road; the committee funded everything else. Total expenditure reached $118,891.05, of which the government contributed just $3,342.43. It opened formally on 7 November 1903, formally handed over to the government that day as the 1903 Public Works Report recorded in its deliberate, measured prose. The early name, Victoria Jubilee Hospital, held the reason for its existence in every syllable.

The main building occupied two floors: two general wards of twelve beds each, a children's ward with eight beds, and four private wards offering one, two, four, and five beds respectively — forty-four beds in total. Sisters' rooms, an office, an operating theatre, and an isolation ward rounded out the facility. The isolation ward sat in a separate wing, connected by a covered walkway that must have been welcome in Hong Kong's subtropical heat. Staff quarters — a pair of semi-detached houses — were linked to the main building by another covered passage. Expansion came in 1923, when a maternity ward opened to the west of the main building, providing accommodation for patients in three classes. A new block followed in 1924, adding a storey to existing structures and creating more rooms for doctors and nurses.

The Japanese occupation of Hong Kong, which began in December 1941, was devastating for the city's institutions. Victoria Hospital was heavily damaged during the fighting and looted in the aftermath. By the time the colony began to reassemble itself in 1945 and 1946, the building was assessed as beyond repair. In 1947, the decision was made: demolish the main structure and use the site for civil servant housing. The maternity block had fared better. Less badly damaged, it was repaired and converted into what became known as Victoria Flats. The site of the demolished hospital became Victoria House, completed in 1951, which today serves as the official residence of Hong Kong's Chief Secretary for Administration.

The hospital is gone, but its address persists at the center of Hong Kong's administrative hierarchy. The Barker Road site that the Jubilee Committee chose for its hilltop hospital now holds two of the colony's — and later Special Administrative Region's — most senior official residences. Victoria House stands where the wards once stood. Victoria Flats, the converted maternity block, still bears the hospital's name in its. A boundary stone from 1903, marking the outer limits of the City of Victoria, stands within walking distance. The jubilee that prompted the hospital's construction belongs to an era before living memory, but on this particular stretch of Barker Road, the name that commemorated it has not moved an inch.