Homer G. Phillips Hospital

Homer G. Phillips Hospital was a hospital located at 2601 N. Whittier Street in The Ville neighborhood of St. Louis, Missouri. It was the city's only hospital for African-Americans from 1937 until 1955, when city hospitals were desegregated, and continued to serve the black community of St. Louis until its closure in 1979. While in operation, it was one of the few hospitals in the United States where black Americans could train as doctors and nurses, and by 1961, Homer G. Phillips Hospital had trained the "largest number of black doctors and nurses in the world." It closed as a full-service hospital in 1979. While vacant, it was listed as a St. Louis Landmark in 1980 and on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982. It reopened as senior living apartments in 2003.HistoryConstructionBetween 1910 and 1920, the black population of St. Louis increased by sixty percent, yet the public City Hospital was segregated, with no facilities for black patients or staff. Thus, a group of black community members persuaded the city in 1919 to purchase a 177-bed hospital (formerly owned by the Barnes Medical College) at Garrison and Lawson avenues on the north side of the city. This hospital, denoted City Hospital #2, was inadequate to the needs of more than 70,000 black St. Louisans, and local black attorney Homer G. Phillips led a campaign for a civic improvements bond issue that would provide for the construction of a larger black hospital.