UPMC St. Margaret

UPMC St. Margaret is a mid-sized, acute care, teaching community hospital of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, located in the Waterworks area of Pittsburgh, near Aspinwall, Pennsylvania. Situated on, the hospital has 249 beds with more than 800 physicians and 1,500 clinical staff members. UPMC Saint Margaret is a leader in hospital technology, making patient records almost 100% electronic. In March 2009, UPMC St. Margaret achieved Magnet Recognition status. Magnet status is the highest international recognition for nursing excellence and leadership.HistoryMargaret Cust was born in 1809 in Greensburg, Pennsylvania. Margaret married John Shoenberger in the mid-1830s, where they lived a gracious life in Pittsburgh. They lived in a beautiful mansion on Penn Avenue. Today, their home is the site of Gateway Center. In 1837, they built a second house in Collinstown, which is now called Lawrenceville. The home was the site of the first Saint Margaret Hospital.Margaret and John Shoenberger lived the ideal life in the nineteenth century; however, their wealth could not buy good health and children. Their great-nephew and great-niece were named after them but they died young. Margaret Cust Blair died at age thirteen and Thomas Shoenberger Blair lived from 1848 to 1852. Also, Margaret's health was declining. She was diagnosed with breast cancer in the 1870s. She died at her home in Lawrenceville on August 30, 1878.After Margaret died, John Shoenberger moved to New York City. He sold his Lawrenceville estate to Allegheny Cemetery. In New York City, he married Alice E. Taylor. John Shoenberger died in New York on November 12, 1889. John left the people of Pittsburgh about $10 million, along with more than of land to build and maintain a hospital to immortalize his first wife. It shall forever be called and known as St. Margaret's Hospital. The hospital was dedicated in 1898 on 46th Street in the Lawrenceville neighborhood, where it remained for 82 years. St. Margaret's Hospital was a longtime ministry of the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh whose convention appointed its board of trustees until 2003.