St. Agnes Hospital (Raleigh, North Carolina)

In 1867, Reverend Aaron Burris Hunter and his wife Sarah moved to Raleigh, North Carolina, to teach at St. Augustine's College, an Episcopal institution created for black freedmen and women in the aftermath of the American Civil War. Over the following decades as the school grew, the Hunters became increasingly concerned about the lack of medical care for black patients in the city. Funding for the creation of a hospital was provided by two donors, the Episcopal Church Women and I. L. Collins, who supplied $1,100 after an appeal from the Hunters. == History ==

St. Agnes Hospital and Training School for Colored Nurses opened in the vacant former college president's residence on the campus of St. Augustine's College on October 18, 1896. The building also served as the housing for the hospital's nurses. A fire in 1904 led to the decision to build a new hospital building. Most of the construction labor was provided by St. Augustine's students, who quarried the stone for the new, four-story structure, which cost approximately $15,000. On February 1, 1909, the third story of the original hospital building caught fire due to a defective stove, causing an estimated $1,000 worth in damage. The Raleigh Fire Department suppressed the blaze while the hospital staff evacuated their 20 patients to temporary quarters. The new hospital building opened in June 1909. The nurses' quarters remained in the old building until 1930, when brick housing for them was constructed, and the original building became office space. Aside from contributions from the city, the hospital also received philanthropic donations from the Duke Endowment, the Episcopal Church, the American Church Institute for Negroes, the Rosenwald Fund, and federal Hill–Burton grants. The institution was backed by Raleigh's white community; during one 1922 funding drive, it received contributions from the local rotary club, newspaper publisher Josephus Daniels, and members of a Ku Klux Klan chapter, who entered a fundraising committee meeting in their robes to hand over their donation. Senior medical students from Shaw attended to cases at St. Agnes Hospital during its early years. Between 1932 and 1954, approximately 80 physicians were trained at the hospital. The institution received accreditation from the American Medical Association and the American College of Surgeons for training residents in medicine, surgery, obstetrics, and gynecology. Nursing students took required chemistry, sociology, and psychology courses at St. Augustine's in addition to their regular nursing curriculum and, by 1950, were sent on clinical rotations to Willard Parker Hospital in New York City and the Veterans Administration Hospital in Tuskegee, Alabama. For its high standards, the nursing school regularly received an "A" grade from the North Carolina Board of Nurse Examiners. The school closed in 1959, having trained an estimated 500 nurses during its existence. In 1956, St. Agnes tended to an average of 80 patients per day. == Fate of building ==

Upon the hospital's closure, its eight-acre site and four buildings were transferred to St. Augustine's College, which began using one nurse dormitory as housing for women students. In 1971 the main building housed the headquarters of Wake Opportunity's Senior Citizens Program. In 1979 it was designated a Raleigh Historic Landmark. The building was also included as a contributing property to the St. Augustine's College Campus historic district, listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980. By 1991 the building housed St. Augustine's security department and was used for storage by campus groundskeepers. Though they pledged to restart the project, the plan was suspended indefinitely as renovation costs grew and the school dealt with a lawsuit from one of the contractors on the project. Several efforts in the 21st century to consider repurposing the building led St. Augustine's to install steel beams to stabilize the building's stone façade. In 2022 a feasibility study was funded to determine whether the ruins could be preserved or renovated. == References ==