Prentice Women's Hospital is an acute care women's hospital located adjacent to both Northwestern Memorial and the

Lurie Children's Hospital Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago, formerly Children's Memorial Hospital and commonly known as Lurie Children's, is a nationally ranked pediatric acute care children's hospital located in Chicago, Illinois. The hospital has 3 ...

, in

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

, Illinois, United States. Prentice Women's Hospital is a member of Northwestern Medicine and serves as a teaching hospital for the

Northwestern University Northwestern University is a private research university in Evanston, Illinois. Founded in 1851, Northwestern is the oldest chartered university in Illinois and is ranked among the most prestigious academic institutions in the world. Charte ...

Feinberg School of Medicine. The hospital provides tertiary-level

obstetric Obstetrics is the field of study concentrated on pregnancy, childbirth and the postpartum period. As a medical specialty, obstetrics is combined with gynecology under the discipline known as obstetrics and gynecology (OB/GYN), which is a surgic ...

gynecological Gynaecology or gynecology (see spelling differences) is the area of medicine that involves the treatment of women's diseases, especially those of the reproductive organs. It is often paired with the field of obstetrics, forming the combined area ...

, and

neonatal An infant or baby is the very young offspring of human beings. ''Infant'' (from the Latin word ''infans'', meaning 'unable to speak' or 'speechless') is a formal or specialised synonym for the common term ''baby''. The terms may also be used to ...

care to patients from the entire region. The hospital has 256 beds, with 86 AAP verified level III neonatal intensive care unit beds, 32 labor and delivery beds, 86 healthy bassinets, and 10 operating rooms. The hospital is directly attached to the Lurie Children's Hospital via skybridge because Lurie physicians provide care on Prentice's neonatal intensive care units.

History

Original building

Bertrand Goldberg Bertrand Goldberg (July 17, 1913 – October 8, 1997) was an American architect and industrial designer, best known for the Marina City complex in Chicago, Illinois, the tallest reinforced concrete building in the world at the time of complet ...

began design in 1971, after the consolidation of Passavant Deaconess Hospital and Wesley Hospital. It was named for Abra “Abbie” Cantrill Prentice. It was opened in 1975. The building was vacated in 2011Joravsky, Ben (2012-08-16) "Prentice preservationists put Rahm in a bind"

Chicago Reader The ''Chicago Reader'', or ''Reader'' (stylized as ЯEADER), is an American alternative weekly newspaper in Chicago, Illinois, noted for its literary style of journalism and coverage of the arts, particularly film and theater. It was founded by a ...

after serving as a hospital until the new Prentice Women's Hospital opened nearby at 250 East Superior Street in 2007.Isaacs, Deanna (2012-08-30) "Rahm's golden opportunity: save Prentice hospital"

Northwestern University announced plans to demolish it and replace it with a medical research facility.Kamin, Blair (2012-08-03) "Emanuel noncommittal on fate of Prentice building"

Chicago Tribune The ''Chicago Tribune'' is a daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, United States, owned by Tribune Publishing. Founded in 1847, and formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" (a slogan for which WGN radio and television ar ...

Preservationists and prominent architects (including at least 6

Pritzker Prize The Pritzker Architecture Prize is an international architecture award presented annually "to honor a living architect or architects whose built work demonstrates a combination of those qualities of talent, vision and commitment, which has produ ...

winners) had called on Northwestern and the City of Chicago to save the building,ArchitectureChicago Plus blog (2012-08-30) appealing to Chicago's "global reputation as a nurturer of bold and innovative architecture".

Jeanne Gang Jeanne Gang (born March 19, 1964) is an American architect and the founder and leader of Studio Gang (established in 1997), an architecture and urban design practice with offices in Chicago, New York, and San Francisco. Gang was first widely re ...

presented a reuse design incorporating the building into a skyscraper. In the debate over the building's planned demolition, Northwestern argued that the site was needed for medical research on heart disease, cancer, and children's diseases. Preservationists responded that Northwestern Memorial Hospital owns a two-square-block piece of vacant land directly across the street from Prentice, and within a potential skybridge's reach from the university's existing research building.

Current building

The new Prentice Women's Hospital opened on October 20, 2007 on the hospital's northern campus border along Superior Street. This facility would replace the old Prentice Women's Hospital Building which later was demolished in September 2014 for new campus construction. The new hospital doubled the size of the previous women's hospital at 947,000 square feet, with one of the largest Neonatal Intensive Care Units in the country.

Awards

In the 2005-06 '' U.S. News & World Report'': Best Hospital rankings, Prentice Women's Hospital was rated as the #32 best hospital in the United States in the field of gynecology. In the 2018-19 '' U.S. News & World Report'' rankings, Prentice Women's was rated as the #13 best hospital in the United States in the field of gynecology and #11 best hospital in neonatology (ranked with Lurie Children's). In 2021, the hospital received a '' Women's Choice Award'' as a "Best Hospital" in the area of obstetrics (ranked with Northwestern Memorial).

References

External links