Douglass Hospital

This corner is the site of the first Black-run hospital in Philadelphia, the second in the United States. Established in 1895, this hospital also housed a nursing school. Du Bois commented at length on this institution:

“The Douglass Memorial Hospital and training School is a curious example of the difficult position of Negroes: for years nearly every hospital in Philadelphia has sought to exclude Negro women from the course in nurse-training and so no Negro physician could have the advantage of a hospital practice. This led to a movement for a Nego hospital; such a movement however was condemned by the whites as an unnecessary addition to a bewildering number of charitable institutions; by many of the best Negroes as a concession to prejudice and a drawing of the color line. Nevertheless the promoters insisted that colored nurses were efficient and needed training, that colored physicians needed a hospital, and that colored patients wished one. Consequently the Douglass Hospital has been established and its success seems to warrant the effort.”

Here we see more focus on the difficult position that Black Philadelphians were put in by the segregation and racism they faced. This is, of course, a major theme for Du Bois. His focus on not just the conditions that Black people found themselves in, but a clear historical and contemporary description of the cause of those conditions, was unique in academic work for that time. Not only was the hospital used to treat patients, but it also trained Black nurses. Penn has extensive archives on the nurses trained over a number of years, including the image and report shown below.

As we talked about before, there were many challenges of finding work in Philadelphia as a Black woman made this an extremely important effort on the part of the people who started it. In addition, the Douglass Hospital operated on a similar model to safety net hospitals today, never turning away anyone because of color or because they were too poor to pay. However, this was also a difficult model to maintain, and the hospital ran into financial difficulties. They combined with another Black-owned hospital that opened shortly after it that we will see as we walk down this block, the Mercy Hospital. It also moved to West Philadelphia in 1919, moving into a former school building at 50th and Woodland. In 1948, the two hospitals merged due to continued difficult finances. A 1951 history of the buildings stated that this “satisfactorily” dealt with the issues each was having, but by the 1970s the hospital had closed.