Provident Hospital, Baltimore's First Black Hospital

Provident Hospital and Free Dispensary was founded in 1894 at 419 Orchard Street, a neighborhood where several hospitals serving the white population were already located. At that time, admitting black patients to white hospitals was basically prohibited. Black patients still needed care and treatment, so a small group of doctors started Provident Hospital. 

The founders included Dr. William T. Carr, Sr. (above) and Dr. J. Marcus Cargill. They wanted to provide an institution where people of color could be attended by physicians of their own race, and that colored physicians might have an opportunity to develop themselves in their specialties and become proficient in them. They also wanted to establish a well-organized training school for nurses. 

Among the early physicians at Provident were three Black physicians who were admitted as members of the Medical & Chirurgical Faculty of Maryland in the 1880s, when the organization’s by-laws had changed members from “gentlemen” to “persons.” The first admitted was Whitfield Winsey, M.D. who became a pupil of Dr. John R.W. Dunbar, a professor of surgery at Washington University and received his medical degree from Harvard in 1877. Next was Reveredy M. Hall, M.D. a Baltimorean who graduated from Howard as a medical doctor in 1872 and was dean and director of Provident Hospital. The third was William H. Thompson, who was born in Yonkers, NY in 1849 and received his doctorate degree at Howard University in 1872.

The hospital soon outgrew its home on Orchard Street and in 1896, the hospital moved to 413 W. Biddle Street, where there was room for 30 beds and an adjoining building for the nurses’ training school.

The Provident Training School for Nurses was the first and only institution in the are to offer Black women the opportunity to train as nurses. The school received official recognition in 1926 and was renamed the Provident Hospital School of Nursing.

Over the years, Provident Hospital went through highs and lows. When Union Memorial Hospital moved to its current location on 33rd Street, Dr. J.M.T. Finney suggested that Provident buy the building on Division Street for $75,000. The new building opened on October 15, 1928 with Dr. William T. Carr as superintendent. Sixteen Black physicians were appointed to the visiting staff and had privileges to treat private patients.

The AMA approved a plan to train six interns in a general rotating program. There were residencies in pediatrics, general surgery and anatomic pathology. Provident was one of five hospitals in the United States that provided specialty training for Black physicians.

Provident stayed at the Division Street location until the late 1960s when construction commenced on a building on Liberty Heights Avenue, and was occupied in 1970. By the mid-1970s, the hospital’s main concern was the integration of Black physicians and patients into previously all-White hospitals which siphoned potential patients from Provident Hospital. In addition to the financial de-stability this caused, the hospital was surrounded by low-income neighborhoods.

Not all news was bad, as surgical and obstetrical residents and summer students rotated though Provident from Meharry Medical College. A hypertension program with numerous outreach facilities was assisted by a significant grant-in-aid. And a cancer-screening clinic, funded by the Morris Goldseker Foundation was entirely free for participants.

In 1985, a low occupancy rate along with financial difficulties, including poor cash flow led to the closing of the hospital. But in 1986 the hospital merged with Lutheran Hospital and formed Liberty Medical Center.

Lutheran Hospital began in the 1870s in West Baltimore as the Hebrew Orphan Asylum.

In the 1920s, when the Hebrew Orphan Asylum moved to where Sinai Hospital is now located, the hospital became West Baltimore General Hospital. By 1939, the hospital contained 100 beds, a nurses’ quarters, maternity wing and power plant. After World War II, it became Lutheran Home and Hospital.

In the 1990s, a partnership with Bon Secours Hospital, Liberty and other community-based health centers was formed to become the Community HealthCare Network of Baltimore. As medical care changed, and fewer and fewer patients actually stayed at hospitals for any signficant amount of time, Liberty Medical only had a 10-15% occupancy rate, not enough to keep the doors open.

In August of 1999, Liberty Medical Center, which had 282 beds and employed about 400 people on the 15-acre campus on Liberty Heights Avenue, closed. From a small hospital that began in a row-house in 1894 to large urban medical center, Provident’s history for caring for the Black population of Baltimore has not been forgotten.

Sources:
Maryland Medical Journal, April 1997
Journal of the National Medical Association, May 1967
Baltimore Sun, August 8, 1999