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Hospital in Missouri, United States

Homer Grand. Phillips Hospital
Geography
Location	St. Louis, Missouri, United states of america
Organization
Blazon	African American Full general Hospital
Services
Beds	177
History
Opened	1937
Closed	1979
Links
Lists	Hospitals in Missouri
Homer G. Phillips Hospital
U.S. National Register of Historic Places
St. Louis Landmark
Homer Yard. Phillips Hospital
Show map of St. Louis Show map of Missouri Prove map of the United States
Location	2601 N. Whittier Street. St. Louis, MO, United States
Coordinates	38°39′31″N ninety°xiv′10″W  /  38.65861°N ninety.23611°West  / 38.65861; -xc.23611 Coordinates: 38°39′31″N 90°14′x″Due west  /  38.65861°N 90.23611°W  / 38.65861; -90.23611
Area	10 acres
Built	1937
Architect	Albert Osburg
Architectural mode	Art deco
NRHP referenceNo.	82004738

Homer G. Phillips Hospital was the only public hospital for African Americans in St. Louis, Missouri, from 1937 until 1979, when the urban center all the same had segregated facilities. Located at 2601 N. Whittier Street in The Ville neighborhood, it was the first educational activity hospital west of the Mississippi River to serve the urban center's Black residents.

It continued to operate after desegregation of city hospitals, and connected to serve the Blackness customs of St. Louis until its closure in 1979. Past 1961, Homer G. Phillips Hospital had trained the "largest number of Black doctors and nurses in the world."^[1] It closed as a full-service hospital in 1979. While vacant, information technology was listed as a St. Louis Landmark in 1980 and on the National Register of Celebrated Places in 1982.

Subsequently being adjusted for residential utilize, it reopened as senior living apartments in 2003.

History [edit]

Construction [edit]

Between 1910 and 1920, the blackness population of St. Louis increased past sixty percent, as rural migrants came North in the Great Migration to take industrial jobs, still the public City Infirmary served only whites, and had no facilities for black patients or staff. A group of black community leaders persuaded the city in 1919 to buy a 177-bed hospital (formerly owned by Barnes Medical College) at Garrison and Lawton avenues to serve African Americans.^[2] This infirmary, denoted City Hospital #2, was inadequate to the needs of the more 70,000 black St. Louisans. Local blackness attorney Homer G. Phillips led a campaign for a civic improvements bond issue that would provide for the construction of a larger hospital for blacks.^[1]

When the bond issue was passed in 1923, the city refused to classify funding for the hospital, instead advocating a segregated addition to the original City Infirmary, located in the Peabody-Darst-Webbe neighborhood and distant from the center of black population. Phillips again led the efforts to implement the original plan for a new hospital, successfully debating the St. Louis Board of Aldermen for resource allotment of funds to this purpose. Site conquering resulted in the buy of 6.3 acres in the Ville, the center of the black community of St. Louis.^[one] But, before construction could begin, Homer M. Phillips was shot and killed. Although two men were arrested and charged with the crime, they were acquitted; and Phillips' murder remains unsolved.^[three]

Construction on the site began in October 1932, with the city initially using funds from the 1923 bail issue and later from the newly formed Public Works Administration.^[4] City builder Albert Osburg was the primary designer of the building, which was completed in phases. The central building was finished between 1933 and 1935, while the ii wings were finished betwixt 1936 and 1937. The infirmary was defended on Feb 22, 1937, with a parade and speeches by Missouri Governor Lloyd C. Stark, St. Louis Mayor Bernard Francis Dickmann, and Secretary of the Interior Harold 50. Ickes.^[one] Speaking to the black community of St. Louis, Ickes noted that the infirmary would assistance the community "accomplish your rightful place in our economical system."^[i] Information technology was renamed in 1942 from Urban center Hospital #2 to Homer G. Phillips, in his honor.^[iii]

Operation [edit]

Although by 1944 the hospital ranked amongst the 10 largest full general hospitals in the United States, it was consistently underfunded and understaffed by the city. By 1948, its medical residents included more than i third of all graduates, including Dr. Helen Elizabeth Nash, from the two American black medical schools. In the 1940s and 1950s it was a leader in developing the do of intravenous feeding and treatments for gunshot wounds, ulcers, and burns. Not only did information technology house a nursing school, but also schools for training x-ray technicians, laboratory technicians and medical record-keeping. It also began offering training and work to foreign doctors who were beingness denied by other hospitals because of their race.^[i]

Afterward a 1955 order by Mayor Raymond Tucker to desegregate city hospitals, Homer G. Phillips began albeit patients regardless of race, colour or religious beliefs. However, information technology remained a primarily blackness establishment into the 1960s, by tradition and because of the ethnic character of its neighborhood. In 1960, each section of the infirmary was staffed by at to the lowest degree ane blackness doctor who also was a staff fellow member of either Washington Academy in St. Louis or Saint Louis Academy, and in 1962, three-fourths of the interns at the hospital were blackness.

Closure [edit]

Equally early equally 1961, proposals were made to merge Homer G. Phillips with Metropolis Hospital. Although some leaders in the black customs opposed the thought (such every bit William Lacy Dirt, Sr., then a urban center alderman and afterwards U.S. representative for Missouri'due south 1st district), others accepted the notion.^[5] Local NAACP official Ernest Calloway said, "Giving up the infirmary may exist the price we have to pay for an integrated community."^[5] By the mid-1960s, efforts were underway to reduce services at the hospital or close it entirely.^[1] In the late 1960s, St. Louis city moved the neurological and psychiatric departments of Homer G. Phillips to Metropolis Infirmary, citing the low pay at Homer G. Phillips and distance from Washington University staff who were affiliated with City Infirmary every bit reasons for the move.^[one]

From 1964 until 1979, no other departments were moved. However, on Baronial 17, 1979, St. Louis abruptly closed all departments at Homer G. Phillips Hospital except for a small-scale outpatient intendance clinic housed in an side by side edifice. The community responded with protests, and more than a hundred law officers were required to control the crowd and to escort remaining patients out.^[vi] William Lacy Clay, Sr. led opposition to the closure, and many in the community charged that the closure was racially motivated.^[7] Picketing and protests outside the hospital connected for more a year after the closure, and a community group chosen Campaign for Human Dignity was formed to continue the movement.^[7] Mayor James F. Conway commissioned a task force to study the result of the hospital, merely nothing resulted of the plan. The protests were ultimately unsuccessful in reopening the hospital.^[7]

In the midst of the protests, the infirmary was listed past the St. Louis Lath of Aldermen every bit a St. Louis Landmark in February 1980.^[viii] In 1981, after a contentious master with incumbent Mayor Conway, Alderman Vincent Schoemehl was elected mayor of St. Louis on a campaign promising to reopen Homer Yard. Phillips.^[seven] Instead, Schoemehl deferred to the Conway chore force.^{[seven] [9]} The next year, the hospital was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982 for its significance in architecture, didactics and to black history.^[1] But in June 1985, Schoemehl ordered the closure of all municipal hospital services, both at Urban center Hospital and at the dispensary at Homer G. Phillips.^[7] St. Louis area public hospital services were consolidated in nearby Clayton, Missouri, and the Homer G. Phillips complex was totally vacated.^[9]

Renovation [edit]

In 1988, developer William Thomas began negotiations to convert the former Homer G. Phillips Hospital into a nursing dwelling, just these efforts failed when agreements to lease the property stalled.^[9] The property was abased until 1991, when the urban center reopened the adjacent clinic. The former nurses' building behind the main infirmary also was reopened as an addition to Annie Malone Children'southward Habitation.^[ix] Notwithstanding, the main building remained vacant.^[9]

In 1998, the daughter of William Thomas, Sharon Thomas Robnett, renewed negotiations with the city to convert the building into a low-income nursing home and apartments for the elderly. She signed a 99-year lease on the property.^[10]

In Dec 2001, renovations began on the main edifice through Robnett's evolution visitor, W.A.T. Nobility Corp., and Dominium Management Services, continuing through July 2003.^[9] The renovation project, led past architects of the Fleming Corporation, toll more than $42 one thousand thousand and produced a 220-unit supervised facility for the elderly, named Homer G. Phillips Dignity Firm.^[11] In response to focus groups, the developers upgraded security measures at the site, including adding a perimeter fence, surveillance cameras, and remote keyless entry.^[11] Homer G Phillips is a fully independent senior living facility for individuals age 55 plus. The Facility offers amenities which include a mini-mart grocery shop, beauty and hairdresser salon, computer lab, fully equipped exercise facility, and much more.

Architecture [edit]

The original Homer 1000. Phillips circuitous includes a master key edifice, 4 wards connected to the central building (forming an X shape), a service and power plant building, and a nurses' residence behind the main building. The original facade of the central edifice was modified with a awning entrance extension of the emergency room facilities, obscuring the offset three stories of the building. All buildings in the complex are xanthous brick with terra cotta trim.^[one]

Although many hospitals were constructed in the 1920s as skyscrapers, Homer M. Phillips was designed with seven stories to fit inside the scale of the Ville neighborhood. A diverseness of roof shapes and polygonal ends on the patient wards add to the design of the edifice. The detailing on the building'southward exterior consists of a crimson granite base of operations and terra cotta trim around windows and as a horizontal course around the buildings. Original secondary buildings, such as the nurses' edifice and lecture halls (continued to the main edifice via tunnel), are included as the part of hospital'southward designation on the National Register of Historic Places. Nevertheless, a detached dispensary congenital in 1960 is non included.^[1]

Controversy [edit]

In 2015, the Associated Press reported that 18 women who gave birth at Homer Grand. Phillips and were told their babies had died during nascency believe their children might be live.^[12] Albert Watkins, an attorney at law representing the women, says that the births occurred from the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s, that all of the mothers were black and poor, mostly from ages xv to xx, and that in every case a nurse told the mother that her child had died but that she could non view the child's trunk. Because they had been prevented from seeing their reportedly dead children, these women doubtable that there may have been a baby selling ring at the hospital.^[13] These claims were dismissed by U.S. Chaser Richard Callahan when medical records revealed that one of the parents had given birth at a different hospital and had abandoned her infant.^[14]

Run into also [edit]

• History of St. Louis, Missouri
• List of hospitals of St. Louis, Missouri
• National Register of Celebrated Places listings in St. Louis (metropolis, A–L), Missouri
• Racial segregation in the Us
• Race and health

Notes [edit]

1. ^ ^{a b c d e f grand h i j yard} "National Register of Celebrated Places Registration Form for Homer M. Phillips Hospital" (PDF). National Annals of Historic Places. National Park Service. 1982-09-23.
2. ^ "American Medical College, Barnes Medical College, and National University of Arts and Sciences Collection - Bernard Becker Medical Library Archives". beckerarchives.wustl.edu.
3. ^ ^{a b} Clayton, Edward T. (September 1977). "The Strange Murder of Homer G. Phillips". Ebony. pp. 160–164. Retrieved January 20, 2011.
4. ^ "National Register of Celebrated Places Registration Form for Tandy Customs Center" (PDF). National Annals of Historic Places. National Park Service. 1999-09-17.
5. ^ ^{a b} "Integration Threatens to Close St. Louis Infirmary". Jet. Oct 26, 1961. p. 51. Retrieved January 20, 2011.
6. ^ Wright, John (2002). Discovering African American St. Louis: A Guide to Celebrated Sites. St. Louis, Missouri: Missouri Historical Society Press. ISBN1-883982-45-6.
7. ^ ^{a b c d eastward f} Stein, Lana (1991). Holding Bureaucrats Accountable: Politicians and Professionals in St. Louis. Tuscaloosa, Alabama: University of Alabama Press. pp. 72–75.
8. ^ "Homer G. Phillips Hospital St. Louis Landmark listing". St. Louis Urban center Cultural Resources Role. St. Louis Urban center.
9. ^ ^{a b c d e f} Allen, Michael (February 22, 2005). "Curt History of Homer G. Phillips Hospital". Preservation Research Office. Archived from the original on April 26, 2005. Retrieved January 20, 2011.
10. ^ Manning, Margie (March 14, 1999). "$32 1000000 apartments, care center planned for Homer G. site". St. Louis Business Journal . Retrieved Jan 20, 2011.
11. ^ ^{a b} Terry, John (January thirty, 2005). "Homer G. Phillips senior center has waiting listing". St. Louis Business Journal . Retrieved Jan 20, 2011.
12. ^ "18 women suspect that babies they were told died are alive". www.msn.com.
13. ^ Was former St. Louis infirmary site for baby-selling ring?, CBS News
14. ^ Patrick, Robert; Cambria, Nancy (Baronial 14, 2015). "St. Louis' summit federal prosecutor deflates baby-stealing ring claims". STLtoday.com . Retrieved 2020-04-13 .

Further reading [edit]

• Early, Gerald Lyn (1998). Ain't But a Place: An Anthology of African American Writings about St. Louis . St. Louis, Missouri: Missouri Historical Lodge Printing. ISBN1-883982-27-viii.

External links [edit]

• Was former St. Louis hospital site for baby-selling band?, CBS News
• Architectural history and photographs of Homer G. Phillips before, during and after renovation
• Architect and preservationist Michael Allen'due south site on Homer G. Phillips Hospital
• Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library, Emory University: Homer K. Phillips Schoolhouse of Nursing records, 1929-1991

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Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homer_G._Phillips_Hospital

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