St. Agnes Hospital was a private hospital in Raleigh, North Carolina, United States. Open from 1896 to 1961, it served the city's black residents. The hospital and an associated nursing school were founded after Aaron Burris Hunter and Sarah Hunter, instructors at St. Augustine's College, became concerned about the limited options local black residents had for medical care. Originally operating out of a former home on St, Augustine's campus, the hospital moved to a new four-story stone building in 1909. Largely reliant on philanthropic contributions, the hospital struggled to maintain adequate funding throughout its existence and served a large number of charity patients. Accredited by the American Medical Association and the American College of Surgeons, dozens of physicians and approximately 500 nurses were trained at the hospital. By the mid-1950s, the hospital was struggling to fund advancements needed to keep up with improving medical care and stricter accreditation standards. The hospital building was condemned in 1955 and the institution closed in April 1961 after Wake County opened a public hospital to treat both black and white patients. The main hospital building fell into ruins, and in 1979 it was declared a local historic landmark by the city of Raleigh.
In 1867, Reverend Aaron Burris Hunter and his wife Sarah moved to Raleigh, North Carolina, to teach at St. Augustine's College, an Episcopal institution created for black freedmen and women in the aftermath of the American Civil War. Over the following decades as the school grew, the Hunters became increasingly concerned about the lack of medical care for black patients in the city.[1] Funding for the creation of a hospital was provided by two donors, the Episcopal Church Women and I. L. Collins, who supplied $1,100 after an appeal from the Hunters.[2][3]
History
St. Agnes Hospital and Training School for Colored Nurses opened in the vacant former college president's residence on the campus of St. Augustine's College on October 18, 1896.[1][4] The building also served as the housing for the hospital's nurses.[2] At the time of its creation, the only other hospital care available for Raleigh's black residents were a small annex at Rex Hospital and the Leonard Hospital at Shaw University, which was open only during part of the year.[1] Sarah Hunter acted as the hospital's first superintendent, while Dr. Lawson A. Scruggs, a Shaw graduate, served as the first attending physician.[4] The hospital admitted its first patient the week after it opened and within six months had cared for 51 people, while its staff provided home care to 223 people.[5] The staff performed their first surgery on April 6, 1897, and on April 21 of the following year, the nursing school hosted commencement for its first two graduates.[6]
St. Agnes nurses, 1910
Two white doctors, Hubert Royster and Catherine Hayden, assumed leadership of St. Agnes at the turn of the century.[4] In 1903, the hospital was expanded to include an additional operating room, sterilization room, kitchen, and two bathrooms.[2] A fire in 1904 led to the decision to build a new hospital building. Most of the construction labor was provided by St. Augustine's students, who quarried the stone for the new, four-story structure,[5] which cost approximately $15,000.[2] Construction began in 1905.[7] On February 1, 1909, the third story of the original hospital building caught fire due to a defective stove, causing an estimated $1,000 worth in damage. The Raleigh Fire Department suppressed the blaze while the hospital staff evacuated their 20 patients to temporary quarters.[8]
The new hospital building opened in June 1909.[2] Equipped with electricity and running water, it housed 75 beds and the nursing school.[9][10] The nurses' quarters remained in the old building until 1930, when brick housing for them was constructed, and the original building became office space.[2] Upon the new building's opening, Rex Hospital ceased treating black patients.[11] In 1916 Shaw University closed Leonard Hospital, leaving St. Agnes the only hospital in Raleigh which would serve black patients.[12] During the 1918 influenza pandemic, St. Agnes' nurses operated an emergency hospital to treat influenza patients.[13] Several members of the hospital's training staff helped staff the McCauley Private Hospital when it opened in 1923.[14] On December 17, 1926, the St. Agnes Hospital building was heavily damaged by a fire. Rendered uninhabitable, patients were relocated to McCauley Private Hospital while a fundraising campaign was conducted to restore the building.[15] By 1941 St. Agnes hosted 100 beds.[6] During World War II the nursing school participated in the Cadet Nurse Corps, and as a result the federal government funded improvements to the hospital.[16]
St. Agnes Hospital, 1923
The hospital struggled with acquiring funding for its operations throughout much of its history, especially due to the high frequency of charity patients.[2] The Great Depression led donations and enrollments at the nursing school to decline, and patients who could not pay their own medical fees increased.[17] Increased traffic from charity patients led the hospital to run a $27,000 deficit in 1947. In 1949 the city of Raleigh agreed to reimburse the hospital $4.50 per day for each charity patient it tended to.[18] Aside from contributions from the city, the hospital also received philanthropic donations from the Duke Endowment, the Episcopal Church, the American Church Institute for Negroes, the Rosenwald Fund,[19] and federal Hill–Burton grants.[20] The institution was backed by Raleigh's white community; during one 1922 funding drive, it received contributions from the local rotary club, newspaper publisher Josephus Daniels, and members of a Ku Klux Klan chapter, who entered a fundraising committee meeting in their robes to hand over their donation.[15][21]
Senior medical students from Shaw attended to cases at St. Agnes Hospital during its early years.[6] Between 1932 and 1954, approximately 80 physicians were trained at the hospital. The institution received accreditation from the American Medical Association and the American College of Surgeons for training residents in medicine, surgery, obstetrics, and gynecology.[19] Nursing students took required chemistry, sociology, and psychology courses at St. Augustine's in addition to their regular nursing curriculum and, by 1950, were sent on clinical rotations to Willard Parker Hospital in New York City and the Veterans Administration Hospital in Tuskegee, Alabama. For its high standards, the nursing school regularly received an "A" grade from the North Carolina Board of Nurse Examiners.[16] The school closed in 1959,[22] having trained an estimated 500 nurses during its existence.[5]
In 1956, St. Agnes tended to an average of 80 patients per day.[2] By that point, the hospital was struggling to fund itself in the face of advances in medical care and stricter accreditation standards. Donors could not supply the necessary funds to update the facilities,[23] and only half of the patients could reimburse the hospital for their care themselves.[24] In 1955 Wake County voters approved a bond referendum to fund the creation of the county's first public hospital, which would have segregated wings to treat both white and black patients.[25] The same year, an inspection committee condemned the St. Agnes Hospital building, unanimously ruling it "a disgrace to the people of Raleigh and of Wake County [...] in considerably worse condition than any place ever inspected by the present grand jury".[24] In 1959 a hired consultant determined "under no conception can it be imagined that this hospital can be renovated or expanded, using the basic structure that now exists".[16] St. Agnes Hospital closed on April 27, 1961, as Wake Memorial Hospital opened to full operations, and all remaining patients were transferred.[26]
Fate of building
Interior ruins of St. Agnes Hospital, with steel beams visible
Upon the hospital's closure, its eight-acre site and four buildings were transferred to St. Augustine's College, which began using one nurse dormitory as housing for women students.[27] In 1971 the main building housed the headquarters of Wake Opportunity's Senior Citizens Program.[28] In 1979 it was designated a Raleigh Historic Landmark.[29] By 1991 the building housed St. Augustine's security department and was used for storage by campus groundskeepers.[7] A project to renovate the building and turn it into office and gallery space using grants was suspended in May 2001—by which point it had its internal features removed—after university officials decided to reconsider for what they wanted to use the building.[30] Though they pledged to restart the project, the plan was suspended indefinitely as renovation costs grew and the school dealt with a lawsuit from one of the contractors on the project.[31] Several efforts in the 21st century to consider repurposing the building led St. Augustine's to install steel beams to stabilize the building's stone façade. In 2022 a feasibility study was funded to determine whether the ruins could be preserved or renovated.[32]
Related Research Articles
The Royal London Hospital is a large teaching hospital in Whitechapel in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. It is part of Barts Health NHS Trust. It provides district general hospital services for the City of London and Tower Hamlets and specialist tertiary care services for patients from across London and elsewhere. The current hospital building has 845 beds and 34 wards. It opened in February 2012.
Matilda Evans, M.D., also known as Matilda Arabella Evans was the first African-American woman licensed to practice medicine in South Carolina and an advocate for improved health care for African Americans, particularly children.
Nurse education consists of the theoretical and practical training provided to nurses with the purpose to prepare them for their duties as nursing care professionals. This education is provided to student nurses by experienced nurses and other medical professionals who have qualified or experienced for educational tasks, traditionally in a type of professional school known as a nursing school of college of nursing. Most countries offer nurse education courses that can be relevant to general nursing or to specialized areas including mental health nursing, pediatric nursing, and post-operative nursing. Nurse education also provides post-qualification courses in specialist subjects within nursing.
St Bartholomew's Hospital, commonly known as Barts, is a teaching hospital located in the City of London. It was founded in 1123 by Rahere, and is currently run by Barts Health NHS Trust.
Saint Augustine's University is a private historically black Christian college in Raleigh, North Carolina. It was founded by Episcopal clergy in 1867 for the education of freed slaves.
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Hospital Authority, formerly Carolinas HealthCare System, is a hospital network with more than 70,000 employees and part of Advocate Health. It operates 40 hospitals, 7 freestanding emergency departments, over 30 urgent care centers, and more than 1,400 care locations in the American states of North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama. It provides care under the Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist name in the Winston-Salem, North Carolina, region, Atrium Health Navicent in the Macon, Georgia area, and Atrium Health Floyd in the Rome, Georgia area. Atrium Health offers pediatric, cancer, and heart care, as well as organ transplants, burn treatments and specialized musculoskeletal programs.
Wellington Hospital, also known as Wellington Regional Hospital, is the main hospital in Wellington, New Zealand, located south of the city centre in the suburb of Newtown. It is the main hospital run by Te Whatu Ora, Capital, Coast and Hutt Valley.
Spartanburg Regional Healthcare System(SRHS) is one of South Carolina's largest healthcare systems. SRHS draws patients primarily from the areas of Spartanburg, Cherokee, Union, and Greenville counties (all located in the Piedmont region of South Carolina) as well as Rutherford and Polk counties (located in western North Carolina). Spartanburg General Hospital was organized under the authority of the South Carolina General Assembly in 1917 and officially became the Spartanburg Regional Health Services District, Inc., a political subdivision of the State of South Carolina, by the charter granted by the secretary of state of South Carolina on May 1, 1995.
The Duke University Health System combines the Duke University School of Medicine, the Duke University School of Nursing, the Duke Clinic, and the member hospitals into a system of research, clinical care, and education.
The University of Virginia (UVA) Health System is an academic health care center associated with the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. The health system includes a medical center, school of medicine, school of nursing, and health sciences library. The health system provides inpatient and outpatient care and patient education and conducts medical research and education.
Nursing is a health care profession that "integrates the art and science of caring and focuses on the protection, promotion, and optimization of health and human functioning; prevention of illness and injury; facilitation of healing; and alleviation of suffering through compassionate presence". Nurses practice in many specialties with varying levels of certification and responsibility. Nurses comprise the largest component of most healthcare environments. Shortages of qualified nurses are found in many countries.
Duke University Hospital is a 1048 -bed acute care facility and an academic tertiary care facility located in Durham, North Carolina, United States. Established in 1930, it is the flagship teaching hospital for the Duke University Health System, a network of physicians and hospitals serving Durham County and Wake County, North Carolina, and surrounding areas, as well as one of three Level I referral centers for the Research Triangle of North Carolina. It is affiliated with the Duke University School of Medicine.
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.
Hospice care is a type of health care that focuses on the palliation of a terminally ill patient's pain and symptoms and attending to their emotional and spiritual needs at the end of life. Hospice care prioritizes comfort and quality of life by reducing pain and suffering. Hospice care provides an alternative to therapies focused on life-prolonging measures that may be arduous, likely to cause more symptoms, or are not aligned with a person's goals.
Medical centers in the United States are conglomerations of health care facilities including hospitals and research facilities that also either include or are closely affiliated with a medical school. Although the term medical center is sometimes loosely used to refer to any concentration of health care providers including local clinics and individual hospital buildings, the term academic medical center more specifically refers to larger facilities or groups of facilities that include a full spectrum of health services, medical education, and medical research.
Lincoln Hospital was a medical facility located in Durham, North Carolina founded to serve the African Americans of Durham County and surrounding areas. With original hospital construction financed by the Duke family, Lincoln served as the primary African American hospital in Durham from its opening in 1901 until 1976, when it closed and transferred its inpatient services to Durham County General Hospital.
The history of nursing in the United States focuses on the professionalization of Nursing in the United States since the Civil War.
Mary Lewis Wyche was an American nurse. She was an advocate of regulation of nursing practice and standards in North Carolina and is considered by many people to be the pioneer of organized nursing in North Carolina. Wyche created a successful objective in legalizing registered nurses in North Carolina, and wrote a book on nursing history. She was inducted into the American Nurses Association Hall of Fame in 2002.
The Lincoln School for Nurses, also known as Lincoln Hospital and Nursing Home School for Nurses, and Lincoln Hospital School of Nursing, was the first nursing school for African-American women in New York City. It existed from 1898 to 1961. It was founded by Lincoln Hospital in Manhattan. The hospital and nursing school, moved to 141st Street, between Concord Avenue and Southern Boulevard in Mott Haven, the South Bronx, after 1899.
John Denys Taylor was a Christian medical missionary who founded Bonda Mission Hospital within the Nyanga district in Zimbabwe.
1 2 Jones, Treva (September 11, 1991). "Shaw, St. Aug's halls may be saved". The News & Observer. Raleigh, North Carolina. p.6B. Archived from the original on August 20, 2022. Retrieved August 20, 2022– via Newspapers.com.
↑ "Fire At St. Agnes". The Evening Times. February 1, 1909. p.5. Archived from the original on 2022-07-23. Retrieved 2022-07-23.
↑ Barnes, Alexander (February 2, 1962). "Lest We Forget St. Agnes". The Carolinian. pp.7–8. Archived from the original on 2022-07-22. Retrieved 2022-07-22.
↑ "Wake Hospital Has 58 Patients". The News & Observer. Raleigh, North Carolina. April 28, 1961. p.38. Archived from the original on August 20, 2022. Retrieved August 20, 2022– via Newspapers.com.
↑ "Senior Citizens Program Moved". The News & Observer. Raleigh, North Carolina. June 25, 1971. p.21. Archived from the original on August 20, 2022. Retrieved August 20, 2022– via Newspapers.com.
de Miranda, Cynthia (July 2010), Leonard Medical Hospital(PDF), Raleigh Historic Landmark Designation Application, Raleigh: Raleigh Department of City Planning
Pollitt, Phoebe Ann; Reese, Camille N. (February 2000). "St. Agnes School of Nursing: A legacy of Hope". ABNF Journal. 11 (1). Association of Black Nursing Faculty: 3–6. PMID10876465. ProQuest218874747
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
