Carver Memorial Hospital

A Black hospital existed because the big one would not serve Black doctors. After Erlanger's 1937 expansion with public money, Black physicians said promised private rooms and an operating room never materialized. In 1945 Black Chattanoogans were given the empty 50-bed West Ellis Hospital on West Ninth Street; attorney M. B. Finkelstein donated its use, and the Chattanooga Times urged readers to contribute once it was clear the hospital would be for Black patients only. Carver opened June 18, 1947, closed in 1962, and the building was demolished in the 1980s.

What the plaque says

Carver Memorial Hospital Carver Memorial, a hospital for Negroes, opened on June 18, 1947, in the Old West Ellis Hospital Building. Named for George Washington Carver, this health-care facility is said to have been the first municipally-owned, tax-supported hospital in America which was staffed by Negro doctors, nurses and other personnel for the care of Negro patients. Carver Memorial closed in 1962.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Ross's Landing — 0.6 mi
  The Tennessee River landing where Chattanooga began and where Muscogee (Creek) and Cherokee people were put on boats and ferried out in 1837 and 1838.
• Bessie Smith Cultural Center — 0.6 mi
  Chattanooga's African American museum and performance hall on the old Ninth Street, named for the Empress of the Blues, who started out singing for change on that same street.
• Tennessee Aquarium — 0.7 mi
  A river-themed aquarium that opened on May 1, 1992, on the Chattanooga bank where John Ross kept a trading post, tracing a raindrop from the Appalachians to the Gulf.
• Walnut Street Bridge — 0.9 mi
  An 1890 truss bridge now open to walkers, and the place where Alfred Blount in 1893 and Ed Johnson in 1906 were lynched, the case that led to the Supreme Court's only criminal trial.

More markers nearby

• William "Uncle Bill" Lewis — 0.4 mi
• First Coca-Cola Bottling Company in the United States — 0.5 mi
• Ernest Walter Holmes, Sr. — 0.5 mi
• Abby Crawford Milton — 0.6 mi