Seattle General Hospital and School for Nurses was a hospital and nursing school in the
U.S. state
In the United States, a state is a constituent political entity, of which there are 50. Bound together in a political union, each state holds governmental jurisdiction over a separate and defined geographic territory where it shares its sover ...
of
Washington
Washington commonly refers to:
* Washington (state), United States
* Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States
** A metonym for the federal government of the United States
** Washington metropolitan area, the metropolitan area centered on ...
. It was located at 909 Fifth Avenue in
Seattle
Seattle ( ) is a seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the seat of King County, Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest regio ...
. The hospital was originally established in 1895 and reopened in a new building in 1900. In 1980, it merged with
Swedish Medical Center
Swedish Health Services, formerly Swedish Medical Center, is the largest nonprofit health provider in the Seattle metropolitan area. It operates five hospital campuses (in the Seattle neighborhoods of First Hill, Cherry Hill and Ballard, and th ...
.
History
Seattle General Hospital was inaugurated on July 1, 1895 as a private Protestant hospital in the three-story Avon House at 2823 First Avenue.
In 1897, it shifted location to the Sarah B. Yesler home at Second Avenue North and Republican Street. In 1899, following acquisition by the
Deaconess
The ministry of a deaconess is, in modern times, a usually non-ordained ministry for women in some Protestant, Oriental Orthodox, and Eastern Orthodox churches to provide pastoral care, especially for other women, and which may carry a limited ...
Home Society of the
Methodist Church
Methodism, also called the Methodist movement, is a group of historically related Christian denomination, denominations of Protestantism, Protestant Christianity whose origins, doctrine and practice derive from the life and teachings of John W ...
, funds were raised to build a new five-story hospital at 909 Fifth Avenue, which opened in November 1900.
In 1905, a wing was added on the Fifth Avenue side, taking its total bed count to 125.
The seven ward Children's Orthopedic Hospital was established in the hospital in 1907.
Between 1897 and 1938, 598 student nurses were trained at the hospital, but it ceased being run by the Methodist church in 1935. J. W. Efaw was president of the hospital in the early 1930s.
From 1902 to 1961, a
medical internship
A medical intern is a physician in training who has completed medical school and has a medical degree but does not yet have a license to practice medicine unsupervised. Medical education generally ends with a period of practical training similar ...
program was offered by the hospital to graduates, and was the only hospital in Washington with less than 150 beds approved for internship training.
Between 1952 and 1958, the Fifth and Marion building was extended to provide for new surgery facilities, laboratories and beds.
The age, space limitations, and location of the hospital building caused the trustees to seek another location in the late 1960s. Sale of the downtown site to the Bank of California led to negotiations with the Steward's Foundation, owners of the Maynard Hospital at University and Summit. On April 1, 1971, Seattle General took ownership and operation of that facility;
Maynard Hospital became history
In the 1970s, important structural changes were made to the hospital's organization and in October 1975, the governing bodies of Seattle General Hospital and The Doctors and Swedish Hospitals eventually announced that they would merge. This was formally recognized on May 5, 1978 when they merged into the Swedish Medical Centre, leading to the closure of the Seattle General facility, which moved to the Seattle Doctors Pavilion in June 1980.
References
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Hospitals in Seattle
Hospital buildings completed in 1900
Hospitals established in 1895
Hospitals disestablished in 1980
1980 disestablishments in Washington (state)
Defunct hospitals in Washington (state)