People’s Hospital. 2221 Locust Street. 1993.
Located at 2221 Locust Street, the People’s Hospital was one of the primary healthcare facilities for African Americans and other people of color in St. Louis before the Civil Rights Act. Run by an interracial board of directors (an extremely uncommon occurance at the time), the hospital serviced the people of Mill Creek Valley following its opening in 1903. While the building remains intact at its original location, the People’s Hospital has been abandoned for years.
Not only were the hospitals in Mill Creek Valley dedicated to providing services to the African American community but they strived to advance education and employment opportunities for women of color. The image portrayed here depicts the first nurse graduates from City Hospital #2 in the year 1919. Over the next forty-nine years, the hospital saw a number of graduates walk through their doors, it wasn’t until 1940 that they finally witnessed the hospital’s first African American superintendent of nurses.
City Hospital #2 was built in 1919 in response to segregation and the lack of healthcare available to African Americans in the St. Louis area. It was one of only three hospitals that provided care to colored citizens at the time. In 1937, it was then renamed to The Homer G. Phillips Hospital and was one of the largest, exclusively black institutions in the United States until it desegregated in 1954.
