Historical Marker
St. Joseph Hospital
Houston, Harris County · Texas
Erected 2006
The six sisters who opened this hospital belonged to a congregation that would later make Houston its home. Founded at Galveston in 1866, the Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word governed their order from St. Mary's Infirmary there until 1928, when the motherhouse moved to Villa de Matel in Houston. From Houston the congregation established missions in Guatemala, El Salvador and Kenya. In 1975 it split its religious work and its hospitals into separate corporations, and in the mid-1990s its SCH Health Care System ran eleven acute-care hospitals and four long-term care centers, St. Joseph among them.
What the plaque says
St. Joseph Hospital St. Joseph Hospital, Houston's first general hospital, opened in 1887 as St. Joseph's Infirmary. Six sisters from the congregation of the Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word, who came to Houston from St. Mary's Infirmary in Galveston, established the facility. Two years after its opening, Harris County officials asked the sisters to care for the county's indigent sick, which they continued to do until 1919. A new hospital built in 1894 accommodated the growing number of patients. Several months after opening, however, fire destroyed the new structure, killing two of the sisters. Another hospital, built on the present site, provided new facilities. During the twentieth century, St. Joseph Hospital established its reputation as a leader in Texas health care. As a pioneer in the medical field, the hospital was among the earliest in the county or the state to: introduce pathology laboratory and x-ray equipment (1912); build a facility devoted to care for women and infants (1936); open a premature infant nursery (1943), coronary intensive care unit (1965) and community mental health center 9196); provide a neonatal transport service (1984); and offer laser lithotripsy for removal of ureteral stones (1987). The hospital has also made important contributions to education by opening the city's first school of nursing 91905) and a large surgical training laboratory (1980). The center was also noteworthy for its research and treatment of cancer. St. Joseph Hospital served as a leader in the medical field by providing quality treatment for its patients. It also served as an important reminder of Houston's early role as a medical center. (2006)
Where it stands
29.74757, -95.36613 · Directions
Worth the stop nearby
- Emancipation Park — 0.8 miThe Third Ward park that freedpeople bought for Juneteenth in 1872, rebuilt in 2017 on Emancipation Avenue and still the center of the city's June 19 celebration.
- Sam Houston Park and the Heritage Society — 0.9 miTen historic buildings gathered in a downtown park below the skyscrapers, among them the 1870 house of the Reverend Jack Yates, built five years after emancipation.
- Buffalo Soldiers National Museum — 1.1 miA museum in Houston's 1925 Light Guard Armory that tells the service of Black soldiers from the Revolutionary War onward, built from one veteran's thirty years of collecting.
- Rothko Chapel — 1.9 miAn octagonal chapel open to all faiths, built by the de Menils around fourteen dark canvases by Mark Rothko, with Barnett Newman's Broken Obelisk standing in the pool outside.