On March 10, 1958, the brand new and most modern Washington Hospital Center opened its doors on Irving Street, after 15 years of planning. While the location and the building were new, the staff members who walked through the doors that day came from the merger of three of the citys' leading and oldest hospitals: The Central Dispensary and Emergency Hospital, Garfield Memorial Hospital and Episcopal Eye, Ear, and Throat Hospital. Each hospital boasted roots reaching back to the previous century, when Washington, D.C., was little more than a sleepy Southern town with fewer than 200,000 residents.
The opening was greeted with much enthusiasm. A local newspaper carried the headline: “The Sunday Star Welcomes the Beginning of a New Era in the Medical History of Washington...” That same paper noted: “Three historic institutions will shed their worn-out garb and emerge as one, dressed in shining apparel that only modern building and science can design.”
The new Hospital Center was one of the first completely air-conditioned hospitals in the country, which was seen as a huge advancement at that time. It also offered the most up-to-date X-ray facilities, the area’s first tissue and eye bank and the largest psychiatric service in the Washington area. The hospital featured private and semi-private rooms instead of wards, intercoms linking patient rooms to nursing stations, and beds that could be raised and lowered at the touch of a button.
Throughout the next 60 years, visionary men and women led the hospital to achieve goals that were unheard of in 1958. They included:
- The city’s first Code Blue system and Coronary Care Unit
- A dedicated Burn Center
- One of the largest concentration of intensive care units in the nation
- MedSTAR, the Medical-Shock-Trauma Acute Resuscitation Unit
- One of the country’s busiest Cardiac Catheterization Labs
- The city’s busiest Cancer Institute
