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The Blockley Almshouse, later known as Philadelphia General Hospital, was a charity hospital and poorhouse located in West Philadelphia. It originally opened in 1732/33 in a different part of the city as the Philadelphia Almshouse (not to be confused with the Friends' Almshouse, established 1713). Philadelphia General Hospital closed in 1977.
The Blockley Almshouse had its roots in the Philadelphia Almshouse, a facility first located in the block between Third, fifth, Spruce and Pine Streets. Constructed in 1731–32, this institution provided the first government-sponsored care of the poor in America, as it offered an infirmary and hospital for the sick and insane, besides housing and feeding the impoverished.
In 1767, it moved to larger quarters occupying the block between Tenth, Eleventh, Spruce and Pine Streets. This site was officially called the Philadelphia Bettering House.
In 1835, the overcrowded Philadelphia Almshouse moved to Blockley Township in West Philadelphia, an area once known as "Blockley Farm" now between 34th Street and University Avenue. Built to house a variety of Philadelphia's indigent population, the facility consisted of a quadrangle of four sizable buildings including a poorhouse, a hospital, an orphanage, and an insane asylum. Construction of the first building had begun in 1830, with its cornerstone laid on May 26. William Strickland was the architect and Samuel Sloan, later to be a well-known architect, worked as journeyman carpenter on the project.
The institution was later renamed the Philadelphia Almshouse and Hospital, but it was commonly called "Old Blockley" for decades after. Operated by a city committee known as the Guardians of the Poor, Blockley's early reputation for care was dismal. In 1864, the "Female Lunatic Asylum" building was accidentally destroyed by workers installing heaters, killing 18 women and injuring another 20. [1] Blockley's geographical isolation from city medical institutions limited clinical care until the University of Pennsylvania, with its medical school, moved to a site just north of the Almshouse grounds in 1871.
As the latter 19th century saw advancements in both medicine and psychiatry, Blockley's mission gradually embraced that of a more conventional public hospital. A nursing school was opened at the site in 1885 under the direction of Alice Fisher, replacing ad hoc patient nurses with a system of skilled nursing. In 1903, operations of the hospital were turned over to the newly created Bureau of Hospitals in the Philadelphia Department of Public Health. In 1906, the insane were moved to the Byberry Mental Hospital, later known as the Philadelphia State Hospital.
"Old Blockley" was renamed Philadelphia General Hospital (PGH) in 1919. In the next few decades, the original almshouse buildings were gradually replaced with modern facilities. By the 1950s the site contained the city's public hospital, as well as a nursing home and a home for the indigent.
In 1952, the new City Home Rule Charter placed the control of Philadelphia General Hospital with a board of trustees. Under contracts signed in 1959, care at PGH was carried out by the medical schools of Temple University and the University of Pennsylvania, who subcontracted work to Jefferson Medical College, Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania, and Hahnemann Medical School.
By the early 1970s, public support including Medicaid allowed private hospitals to expand treatment for the poor. Facing both financial difficulties as well as a stock of aging buildings, the board of PGH closed the hospital entirely in 1977.
The Almshouse was built by the city in what was then known as Blockley Township, on land purchased from the Andrew Hamilton estate. This parcel of land stretched from what are now known as Civic Center Boulevard to Guardian Drive and from University Avenue to 34th Street. A blue historical marker was erected on Curie Boulevard commemorating the significance of the site.
Today the site is occupied by parts of Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Health System, and the Veterans Health Administration and represents a major center of medical research and care in Philadelphia. The Penn Museum also stands on former Almshouse grounds. A long brick wall topped by an ornately decorated iron fence that dates back to PGH still forms part of the southern and western boundaries of the site.
In 2001, more than 1,000 bodies associated with the Almshouse were recovered from an adjacent construction site and reburied in nearby Woodlands Cemetery.
A nursing home is a facility for the residential care of older people, senior citizens, or disabled people. Nursing homes may also be referred to as care homes, skilled nursing facilities (SNF) or long-term care facilities. Often, these terms have slightly different meanings to indicate whether the institutions are public or private, and whether they provide mostly assisted living, or nursing care and emergency medical care. Nursing homes are used by people who do not need to be in a hospital, but require care that is hard to provide in a home setting. The nursing home staff attends to the patients' medical and other needs. Most nursing homes have nursing aides and skilled nurses on hand 24 hours a day.
An almshouse is charitable housing provided to people in a particular community, especially during the Middle Ages. They were often targeted at the poor of a locality, at those from certain forms of previous employment, or their widows, and at elderly people who could no longer pay rent, and are generally maintained by a charity or the trustees of a bequest. "Alms" are, in the Christian tradition, money or services donated to support the poor and indigent. Almshouses were originally formed as extensions of the church system and were later adapted by local officials and authorities.
A poorhouse or workhouse is a government-run facility to support and provide housing for the dependent or needy.
Pennsylvania Hospital is a private, non-profit, 515-bed teaching hospital located at 800 Spruce Street in Center City Philadelphia, The hospital was founded on May 11, 1751 by Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Bond, and was the second established public hospital but had the first surgical amphitheatre in the United States. and its first medical library. It is part of the University of Pennsylvania Health System.
The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, also known by its acronym CHOP, is a children's hospital in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Its primary campus is located in the University City neighborhood of West Philadelphia on the campus of the University of Pennsylvania. The hospital has 594 beds and more than one million outpatient and inpatient visits annually. It is one of the world's largest and oldest children's hospitals and the first hospital in the United States dedicated to the healthcare of children.
University City is the easternmost portion of West Philadelphia, encompassing several Philadelphia universities. It is situated directly across the Schuylkill River from Center City.
Satterlee General Hospital was the largest Union Army hospital during the American Civil War. Operating from 1862 to 1865 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, its physicians and nurses rendered care to thousands of Union soldiers and Confederate prisoners. After its patient population spiked following the battles of Bull Run and Gettysburg, this hospital became the second-largest in the country with 34 wards and hundreds of tents containing 4,500 beds.
Drexel University College of Medicine is the medical school of Drexel University, a private research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The medical school represents the consolidation of two medical schools: Hahnemann Medical College, originally founded as the nation's first college of homeopathy, and the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania, the first U.S. medical school for women, which became the Medical College of Pennsylvania when it admitted men in 1970; these institutions merged in 1993, became affiliated with Drexel University College of Medicine in 1998, and were fully absorbed into the university in 2002. With one of the nation's largest enrollments for a private medical school, Drexel University College of Medicine is the second most applied-to medical school in the United States. It is ranked no. 83 in research by U.S. News & World Report.
Alice Fisher was a nursing pioneer. During her brief career at the Philadelphia General Hospital (PGH) she improved the standards of care at the institution and created the hospital's nursing school.
Thomas Story Kirkbride was a physician, alienist, hospital superintendent for the Institute of the Pennsylvania Hospital, and primary founder of the Association of Medical Superintendents of American Institutions for the Insane (AMSAII), the organizational precursor to the American Psychiatric Association. Along with Benjamin Rush he is considered to be the father of the modern American practice of psychiatry as a specific medical discipline. His directive and organization of institutions for the insane were the gold-standard of clinical care in psychiatry throughout the 19th century.
The Taunton Alms House is a historic alms house at 350 Norton Avenue in Taunton, Massachusetts. The present facility was built in 1876 as a poorhouse, and was enlarged in the 20th century after its conversion to a nursing home. The building is architecturally a fine example of institutional Italianate architecture, and is an important reminder of progressive social services provided in the late 19th century. The building was added to National Register of Historic Places in 1984.
A hospital is a healthcare institution providing patient treatment with specialized health science and auxiliary healthcare staff and medical equipment. The best-known type of hospital is the general hospital, which typically has an emergency department to treat urgent health problems ranging from fire and accident victims to a sudden illness. A district hospital typically is the major health care facility in its region, with many beds for intensive care and additional beds for patients who need long-term care.
The Friends' Almshouse of Philadelphia was founded in 1713 by the city's Quaker leadership to help destitute members of the Society of Friends, although people of other creeds were sometimes admitted. As such, this was the first institution in America to care for poor citizens. The combination poorhouse and workhouse occupied two small buildings built especially for it on the south side of Walnut Street between Third and Fourth Streets. The houses were augmented with a substantial brick building fronting Walnut Street in 1729.
Ann Preston was an American physician, activist, and educator. As head of the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania, she was the first female dean of a medical school in the United States of America.
Founded in 1850, The Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania (WMCP), formally known as The Female Medical College of Pennsylvania, was the first American medical college dedicated to teaching women medicine and allowing them to earn the Doctor of Medicine degree.
Rufus Wyman (1778–1842) was an American physician. He was the first physician and superintendent of the Asylum for the Insane, renamed in 1823 to McLean Hospital, part of the Massachusetts General Hospital system, and the first mental hospital in the state.
John B. Chapin M.D. (1829-1918) was an American physician and mental hospital administrator. He was an advocate for the removal of mentally ill patients from the almshouses in New York State to a hospital setting and helped to pass a state law that provided hospital care for the patients.
Charles Karsner Mills, M.D. was an American physician and a pioneer in neurology. He founded the first neurology department in a general hospital in the United States at the Philadelphia General Hospital in 1877 and served as chief of neurology at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. He was a professor of neurology at the University of Pennsylvania from 1877 to 1915. He founded the Philadelphia Polyclinic and taught there as professor of diseases of the mind and nervous system from 1883 to 1898. He led major reforms to psychiatric hospitals in the Philadelphia area including the closing of the Blockley Almshouse and the construction of the Philadelphia General Hospital and Byberry Hospital for Mental Diseases. He published over 300 scientific papers on neurology topics including cerebral localization, electrotherapeutics, aphasias and the effects of tumors in the central nervous system. In 1900, he first described a case of ascending paralysis, a rare motor neuron condition that has become known as Mills' syndrome.
The Pennsylvania Almshouse Painters were three self-taught artists; Charles C. Hofmann, Louis Mader and John Rasmussen, who are almost exclusively known for their paintings of the almshouse in Berks County, Pennsylvania, done in an early folk art style. They were all born in Germany.
Blockley may refer to:
39°56′39″N75°11′46″W / 39.94406°N 75.19618°W
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