St Mary's Hospital For Children Inc history

1894: Following an outpouring of compassion and generosity from the community, St Mary’s purchases the Green estate on Jones Hill in Dorchester and moves operations to St Mary’s current location near Uphams Corner.

The relationship between HSHS St Mary's Hospital Medical Center and Green Bay dates back to 1900, when the Misericorde Sisters came to Green Bay to open a home for unwed mothers and their babies.

1902: By this year, more than 1,000 infants and unwed mothers call St Mary’s home.

In 1903, the hospital and a nurse training school opened in a building on the corner of Webster Avenue and Crooks Street.

On August 12, 1912, the Sisters left Stella Niagara for Richwood, West Virginia, where they opened a school and, the next year, a hospital.

In 1921, they opened a second West Virginia hospital, in Buckhannon.

St Mary 's Hospital was founded by the Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word in 1923 to expand the call of Bishop Dubuis to minister to "Our Lord Jesus Christ suffering in the persons of a multitude of sick and infirm of every kind who seek relief at your hands."

On November 6, 1924, the Sisters were ready to open their 35-bed hospital and place it under the protection of Mary, the Mother of God.

In June of 1927, St Mary's accepted its first intern, Doctor Harry E. Beard, a graduate of the Medical College of Virginia.

1929: As the demand for services becomes greater, St Mary’s expands into a general hospital, incorporating itself as St Margaret’s Hospital.

In 1931, St Mary's took a major step forward when it received the formal approval of the American College of Surgeons.

In 1933, an earthquake shook Long Beach and destroyed St Mary’s Hospital.

Soon, the shortage of beds again was acute, and despite the twin ravages of the Great Depression and the 1937 flood that inundated much of Huntington, St Mary's raised $200,000 in contributions from the community to finance the construction of a new wing.

The wing was dedicated on November 9, 1938.

Plunged into war by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the nation found itself in urgent need of trained nurses, and so St Mary's expanded enrollment at its School of Nursing.

1943: As the hospital continues to expand, the facility can no longer accommodate the hundreds of orphaned children at St Mary’s Infant Asylum.

Nuns from the Roman Catholic religious order the Daughters of Wisdom began caring for the children in 1946 and managed the Home for many years.

On November 6, 1949, St Mary's marked its 25th anniversary with an open house and a Pontifical High Mass of Thanksgiving.

In 1951, St Mary’s flagship facility was moved to a nine acre campus in Queens where it currently operates a 124-bed inpatient program.

And in 1958, St Mary's broke ground for yet another addition.

In 1960, responding to the request of the Bishop of Green Bay for a Catholic hospital on Green Bay's growing west side, the Sisters relocated their entire campus to its current site on Shawano Avenue.

As the economics of health care delivery were changing dramatically, the Misericorde Sisters made the difficult decision to end sponsorship of St Mary's in 1973.

And on November 24, 1974, St Mary's celebrated its 50th anniversary by dedicating its new addition.

Open heart surgery became a reality in the Tri-State on September 24, 1979, when the first open heart operation was performed in St Mary's new $2.35 million heart unit.

The new hospital opened as the first all private-room hospital in Northeast Wisconsin in the fall of 1981.

In 1983, St Mary’s added a family-centered home care program to care for children with the highest levels of medical complexity.

The Family Birthing Center was added in 1988 as well as an enlargement and renovation of St Mary's Emergency Center.

In July 1989, HSHS St Mary's Hospital Medical Center and HSHS St Joseph's Hospital of Chippewa Falls opened Libertas, a 24-bed inpatient facility for chemically dependent adolescents on the HSHS St Mary's Hospital Medical Center campus.

In 1992, a major ambulatory wing was added including outpatient surgery, advanced radiology and diagnostic services, respiratory care, pulmonary medicine and a new education center.

For more than a century, St Margaret’s Hospital for Women shared the Dorchester campus with St Mary’s until 1993 when the hospital closed and the current-day St Mary’s Center for Women and Children was established.

And on July 18, 1995, St Mary's took a big step in that direction when it broke ground for a new outpatient center.

In 1996, HSHS St Mary's Hospital Medical Center joined with HSHS St Vincent Hospital, Beaumont-Webster Clinic and West Side Clinic to form Prevea Health Services, Inc., an integrated health care delivery system.

By July 1997, the outpatient facility was completed and opened its doors providing the community with outpatient surgical and diagnostic services as well as additional physician offices.

November 6, 1999 marked the 75th Anniversary of St Mary's Hospital.

The Joslin Diabetes Center of Boston, an international leader in diagnosing and treating diabetes, opened a center at St Mary's in January 2000.

In August 2002, St Mary's Board of Directors and the Pallottine Missionary Sisters agreed that the hospital would be renamed St Mary's Medical Center.

A regional cancer center opened on HSHS St Mary's Hospital Medical Center's campus in January 2010 as part of the Regional Cancer Collaborative.

In 2013, after more than six decades of helping children, St Mary’s began caring for adults over 21 as well with the opening of The Albero House.

One of the most recent additions to our programs is the Locomotor Training Program, which began in 2017 and provides rehabilitation to children with spinal cord injuries.