Emory Healthcare history

1908 The Davis-Fischer Sanatorium, forerunner to Emory Crawford Long Hospital, opens on Crew Street and soon moved to Linden Avenue.

He had stipulated that the hospital be built in honor of his mother, Henrietta Egleston, who passed away in 1912 and who had tragically lost four of her five young children to childhood diseases.

The school split and merged and changed names several times before reprising its original name by the time it became Emory University School of Medicine in 1915.

In 1916, prominent insurance agent Thomas R. Egleston Jr. died, leaving $100,000 in his will to buy land and construct a children’s hospital.

In 1919, the Calvin W. Hunnicutt house on Spring Street Northwest, opposite what is today Baltimore Place, was purchased for the hospital.

By November 1922 the hospital had grown too large for its quarters and was moved to its current DeKalb County site on the Emory University campus.

However, the property was sold in 1923 because increasing traffic had made the location too loud for recuperating patients needing rest.

Finally, in 1926, another property was purchased: a 15-acre patch of land located on what was then Forrest Road and Fortune Street, now the intersection of Ralph McGill Boulevard and Wabash Avenue.

The hospital was founded in 1928.

1937 With a gift of $50,000, Robert W. Woodruff, legendary leader of The Coca-Cola Company, established the Winship Cancer Center, named for his grandfather, who died of the disease.

In 1944, a forward-thinking group of citizens founded the Greater Columbus Committee, which organized the Columbus Planning Association.

Spalding’s desire to help was initially sparked in 1946 when Margaret Mitchell, famed author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel “Gone With the Wind,” wrote to him to express her concern about the healthcare system available to African Americans in Atlanta.

In May 1947, the Fulton-DeKalb Hospital Authority, led by Hughes Spalding, authorized construction to begin on the hospital.

Emory University Hospital, circa 1950

When it finally opened in 1952, the Hughes Spalding Pavilion held more than 130 beds and provided medical care for African American adults and children.

1953 The Emory Clinic, the private practice of Emory's clinical faculty, is established.

1956 – Egleston becomes the pediatric teaching affiliate of Emory University School of Medicine.

1959 Henrietta Egleston Hospital for Children (now Children's Healthcare of Atlanta at Egleston) relocates to the Emory campus.

1962 Doctor Charles Hatcher performs Georgia's first blue baby operation using open heart surgery.

In 1963 he performs the state's first aortic valve replacement.

1965 – Scottish Rite expands into a full-fledged medical center.

1966 The Woodruff Medical Center (now Woodruff Health Sciences Center) is established to bring together those components of Emory involved in patient care, teaching of health professionals, health-related research, and policies for prevention and treatment of disease.

Later, the medical school's dean advocates for a new facility, which opens near Emory's campus in 1967.

1970 Doctor Charles Hatcher performs Georgia's first successful coronary bypass.

The hospital’s new expansion and updated name, Scottish Rite Children’s Hospital, launched in July 1976 at its current location in north Atlanta.

1979 Emory University receives $105 million from the Emily and Ernest Woodruff Foundation, the largest gift at the time to an educational institution in United States history.

—1982: Georgia’s first injection of a clot buster to treat heart attack

In 1983, Hughes Spalding Pavilion expanded its facilities.

1985 Surgeons at Emory perform Atlanta's first heart transplant.

1986 Atlanta industrialist O. Wayne Rollins donates $10 million for construction of the Rollins Research Center.

1987 Doctor John Douglas performs the nation's first coronary stent implant.

1988 Doctor Kirk Kanter performs the state's first pediatric heart transplant.

1989 Emory surgeons perform Georgia's first kidney-pancreas transplant.

1990 Rollins School of Public Health is established.

The facility reopens in 1992 as Hughes Spalding Children’s Hospital.

1996 The Woodruff family of foundations creates the Robert W. Woodruff Fund with grants of Coca-Cola stock totaling $295 million to help support the health sciences center named for Robert Woodruff and the Winship Cancer Center (now Winship Cancer Institute) named for Woodruff's grandfather.

1997 Emory Healthcare is created to unite Emory's hospitals and clinic into one system of care.

In 1998, Egleston merged with the Scottish Rite Medical Center to form Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta.

1999 A research wing that includes the Vaccine Research Center opens at Yerkes National Primate Research Center.

2000 The Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing moves into a new 100,000 square-foot home.

2001 The Whitehead Biomedical Research Building opens with 325,000 square feet of space for interdisciplinary research programs.

In 2002 the Food and Drug Administration approved the use of a protein that stimulates bone growth and provides an alternative to painful bone grafts, an outgrowth of work by Emory orthopedic surgeon Scott Boden.

2003 The Emory Winship Cancer Institute moves into a new facility that supports outpatient cancer care and research.

In 2004, Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta and Grady Health System jointly announced plans for Children’s to provide pediatric services at Hughes Spalding.

2005 Emory Healthcare rolls out the second phase of a $50 million electronic medical record initiative.

In 2006, Children’s assumed responsibility for the management of services at Hughes Spalding Children’s Hospital, adding a third hospital to anchor our growing System.

2007 A medical education building opens on the Emory campus with state-of-the-art simulation suites, auditoriums, and classrooms.

2008 The 120-bed Emory University Orthopaedics & Spine Hospital opens in Tucker, Georgia.

2009 Emory Crawford Long Hospital is renamed Emory University Hospital Midtown, to better reflect its role as a major component of Emory.

In 2010, a new building for the hospital opened at the same location, providing expanded facilities, updated equipment, a primary care center, a sickle cell clinic and an asthma clinic.

2011 Emory and Children's Healthcare of Atlanta break ground on a joint research building.

2012 Emory's Winship Cancer Institute celebrates its 75th anniversary.

2013 The 200,000-square-foot Health Sciences Research Building (HSRB) opens; a two-story bridge connects the building with the Emory Children's Center, which houses both pediatric research and patient care.

2014 Emory University Hospital becomes the first hospital in the country to treat an Ebola patient and eventually treats four patients, all of whom survive.

2015 After treating former Ebola patient Ian Crozier for eyesight-threatening uveitis caused by the Ebola virus, an Emory Eye Center team travels to Liberia to help establish an eye clinic for Ebola survivors there.

2016 Emory's Brain Health Center launches the largest clinical research study in Atlanta history to understand aging and aging-related disease.

2017 Emory's Winship Cancer Institute earns National Cancer Institute Comprehensive Cancer Center designation.