Title: Grace Hospital Collection Genre: Papers Date: 1880-1978 Size: 12 linear feet (12 storage boxes & 1 ledger volume) ID#: 1352 OCLC: ©Walter P. Reuther Library of Labor and Urban Affairs HEFA.01c.update |
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Scope & Contents
Grace Hospital opened for patients in December, 1888 with seventy-five beds. Named for the late daughter of one of the hospital’s benefactors, Senator James McMillan, it was built on a plot of land at the corner of Willis Avenue and John R Street donated by wealthy Detroit real estate developer Amos Chafee. During its first year, the hospital admitted 617 patients and treated 3,845 in its free outpatient clinic, one of the first such operations in the Midwest. In 1889 a Board of Lady Managers was established to act with the Board of Trustees in administering the hospital. Mrs. John S. Newberry served as its first president, succeeded on her death in 1912 by her daughter, Mrs. Helen N. Joy.
Grace Hospital expanded rapidly over the next several decades, serving over 15,000 inpatients and 90,000 outpatients by its fiftieth year, 1938, and opening the Northwest Branch in 1942. Building additions in 1953 and 1964 made Grace the second largest voluntary non-profit hospital in Michigan. Grace and Harper Hospitals merged in 1973 and consolidated with other hospitals in the newly-created Detroit Medical Center in 1985.
The Grace Hospital Training School for Nurses, one of the first in the United States, was organized in 1889 with fourteen students under the direction of Eugenie Hibbard, and closed its doors in 1980, having graduated over seven thousand nurses in its 91-year history.
The Grace Hospital Collection consists of the minutes of the Board of Trustees, the Board of Lady Managers, the Medical Staff Executive Committee, and other hospital committees, correspondence, clippings, reports, and publications relating to the administration of the hospital and the Detroit Medical Center, medical procedures and education, the activities of the Grace Hospital School of Nursing and the hospital Women’s Auxiliary, and to the history of health care and hospital development in Detroit in the twentieth century.
Detroit Hospitals
Detroit Medical Center
Health Care in Detroit
Grace Hospital School of Nursing
Medical Education
Nursing Education
Dr. Myra Babcock Eugenie Hibbard
Dr. Warren Babcock Dr. Frederick Hyde, Jr.
Dr. William Beaumont At. T. Putnam
A large number of photographs relating to Grace Hospital and the Grace Hospital School of Nursing have been placed in the Archives Audiovisual Collection.