Delnor Community Health System history

In 1908, Doctor Raymond G. Scott founded Colonial Hospital, a nine-bed facility housed in a stately home in the heart of Geneva.

As early as 1923, Lester J. and Dellora A. Norris had been thinking of giving a hospital to the community.

By 1925, the growing population needed a bigger hospital.

Work started on the hospital in July 1939.

Dedicated on Thanksgiving Day in 1940, the hospital was named “Delnor” for the first three letters in Dellora Norris’ first and last names.

In 1958, a citizens’ group incorporated as the Central DuPage Hospital Association (CDHA), with the purpose to establish a much-needed hospital in the area.

The community pooled its resources to raise funds and in 1963, the CDHA purchased the sanitarium and remodeled and expanded it to become the new CDH.

Since opening in 1964, Central DuPage Hospital (CDH) has grown from a 113-bed acute care facility with 66 physicians, to a full-service hospital with three times the beds and more than 900 physicians on the medical staff.

By 1970, CDH had more than doubled in size.

In 1986, Delnor and Community Hospitals merged to form the Delnor-Community Hospital.

In 1989 construction began on a new hospital at Randall and Keslinger Roads in Geneva for the newly created Delnor-Community Hospital.

Up until 1990, helicopters had been using the parking lot at Bethlehem Lutheran Church and DuPage Airport as heliports for transferring critically ill patients.

In 1996, developer Milton Blair proposed some 3.5 acres of the former Delnor Hospital site be used to create a 110-unit, multi-level assisted living center for senior citizens called, Delnor Community Residential Living.

That facility opened in the fall of 1998.