Whatever Happened To...St. Mary’s Hospital?

St. Mary’s Hospital was the first hospital in Rochester, a hospital started by Catholics with humble beginnings and a dedication to serve the poor.

Civil War soldiers were treated there, as St. Mary’s was designated an official “Army Hospital” during those tumultuous times. The hospital was heavily damaged during a late-19th century fire but quickly rebuilt and introduced a number of firsts to the area, including the earliest motorized ambulance.

Community fundraisers helped to keep St. Mary’s going, and the hospital won a national award for its community service. The longtime campus at Genesee and West Main streets remains, but St. Mary’s has not served as a hospital for nearly two decades.

St. Mary’s was founded in 1857 after an appeal by then-Bishop John Timon of Buffalo, whose diocese then included the Rochester area.

The diocese had purchased land in what was and still is known as the Bull’s Head area of the city. Three Catholic nuns from the Daughters of Charity arrived to get things started later that year. (By the way, City Hospital – which was later renamed Rochester General – was organized earlier, but did not open its doors until 1864.)

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The need for a hospital was exacerbated by recent cholera epidemics, as noted in a book celebrating St. Mary’s Hospital’s 75th anniversary.

“The sick had no place in which they might find care and succor, when every form and type of disease could find treatment only in the home or in the office of the physician, when even a slight accident might have serious results because of the lack of hospital facilities,” wrote then-Bishop John O’Hern in the 1932 publication.

The three nuns set up in two old stone stables at the intersection of Genesee and West Main. They reportedly arrived here with only 50 cents, and area residents donated money, bedding and other supplies.

Within two years, a three-story wing was built on Genesee Street and by 1863, the “permanent” main hospital opened. That was around the time the federal government designated St. Mary’s as an “official” hospital to care for injured Civil War soldiers.

Local leaders agreed with federal officials that the wounded would fare better closer to their homes. Soldiers began arriving from Southern battlefields “with torn limbs and gangrened wounds,” according to the 1932 hospital book. Another account said prisoners released from the infamous Andersonville Prison in Georgia made their way in a condition described as “living dead.”

St. Mary’s quickly was overwhelmed, and the hospital leased a nearby building and moved civilian patients there. Barracks were erected on the hospital grounds when no other space was available.

Hundreds of soldiers were treated at a time at St. Mary’s. The total number of Civil War soldiers served was somewhere between 2,500 and 5,000, depending on various accounts.

After the Civil War ended, St. Mary’s continued its mission to serve anyone and everyone who needed help. “The sisters did not compromise their commitment to provide free care to all who could not afford to pay,” Mark Hare wrote in a 2007 Democrat and Chronicle story. “Again and again, Rochesterians raised money to keep St. Mary’s open.”

That dedication was highlighted after the fire in February, 1891. The majority of the main hospital building and other areas were destroyed. More than 300 patients, hospital staff members and 19 Sisters of Charity got out safely. The rebuilt areas opened later that year.

A training school for nurses was established in 1892 and a new horse-drawn ambulance was purchased the same year. Other departments and units followed soon after, including an operating “pavilion,” a contagious “pavilion” and a maternity department.

St. Mary’s debuted Rochester’s first motorized ambulance in 1914. The influenza epidemic that struck the nation in 1918 “taxed the hospital to overcrowding.” A new “nurses’ home” was added in 1923 and a new main building was constructed in 1941, with additions put on in subsequent years.

The Daughters of Charity continued to operate St. Mary’s and add services like an eye clinic and hospice care. A $40 million construction and renovation project was completed in 1985.

That work was done at least in part to attract doctors and patients back to St. Mary’s, according to news accounts. Many had left in the 1970s when the neighborhood declined and more modern hospitals opened, including Park Ridge Hospital in Greece (which was featured in a previous “Whatever Happened To...? installment).

With fewer than 300 beds, St. Mary’s was the smallest hospital in the Rochester area. St. Mary’s joined a national healthcare system in 1987, and the president of the organization said in a news story that year, “Our identity is service, but service in the 20th century, and it includes words like ‘profit.’ We have to have that to carry on our work.”

Nonetheless, St. Mary’s continued its mission of community healthcare and assisting the poor, and the hospital received national recognition in 1996 when it won the Foster G. McGaw Prize for community service. But major changes were on the immediate horizon.

St. Mary’s merged with Park Ridge in 1997 to form Unity Health Systems. Many of the functions at St. Mary’s were moved to the Greece campus and St. Mary’s closed as a hospital.

The campus has been used since then for a variety of healthcare and human services functions, including family medicine and dental care, urgent care, dialysis and more. Part of the campus also was converted to affordable senior housing.

Alan Morrell is a Rochester-area freelance writer

About this feature

“Whatever Happened To? ...” is a feature that explores favorite haunts of the past and revisits the headlines of yesteryear.

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