Chicago ? Long before it inspired TV’s “ER” and was a setting in the movie “The Fugitive,” Cook County Hospital was a kind of Ellis Island of medicine.

From its 1914 opening, the public hospital was one place in Chicago where the huddled masses knew that they would receive medical care without regard to their color, their language or their ability to pay.

That helps explain the effort to save the now-shuttered hospital from the wrecking ball.

Along with the preservationists who usually turn out when old buildings are threatened, this campaign has attracted scores of people whose lives are tied to the mammoth structure, including doctors, nurses, patients and neighbors.

More than 6,500 people have signed petitions to save the eight-story hospital, which the county’s board of commissioners voted in 1999 to tear down once a new hospital was built next door.

In December, the John H. Stroger Jr. Hospital of Cook County opened and the old hospital closed its doors. That seemingly cleared the way to raze the old building and erect a parking garage and a park, as planned.

To be sure, those fighting to save the sprawling structure are not saying it should be a hospital again. This is a building, after all, that the American College of Surgeons declared too decrepit for modern surgery — in the 1930s. And the day it closed it was still largely without air conditioning.

But they say the building can be gutted for a host of uses, such as lofts, offices or a fitness center, with a gymnasium and a track.

Preservationists say the building is worth saving not just because it represents a grand example of ornate Beaux Arts architecture, but because of what the terra cotta facade and limestone columns say about the county’s commitment to the poor.

Jonathan Fine, president of Preservation Chicago, stands outside of old Cook County Hospital in Chicago. Fine's organization is fighting to save the building from demolition.

“If you look at what the county decided to build, you would think the hospital was built for the elite,” said Jonathan Fine, president of Preservation Chicago, which is leading the fight. “What we were saying to the immigrant was not only do we welcome you, when you get sick we will take care of you in a magnificent piece of architecture.”