Children's Healthcare of Atlanta - Egleston Hospital

History

In 1928, Henrietta Egleston Hospital for Children opened in the Old Fourth Ward east of downtown Atlanta at 640 Forrest Avenue (now Ralph McGill Blvd.). It opened with the financial support of Thomas R. Egleston Jr. In the first year the 52-bed facility was open, 605 children were treated. The original hospital site was on the north side of Forrest Avenue (now Ralph McGill Blvd.) on the east side of Fortune St. (today Wabash Ave.).[1] Today the AMLI Parkside apartments occupy the site.

The hospital contained the original Dolly Blalock Black Memorial Garden,[2] dedicated to Elizabeth "Dolly" Blalock, wife of Eugene R. Black, Sr., president of the World Bank.

In the 1950s Egleston became the pediatric teaching hospital affiliate for the Emory University School of Medicine, and in 1959 relocated to the university's campus. A prominent local and women's rights activist Ella Lillian Wall Van Leer played an important role at the hospital as its trustee, President of the Auxiliary department and Director of Volunteers until 1976.

Old Rainbow Logo of Egleston prior to 1998 merger becoming Children's Healthcare of Atlanta

In 1959 the Atlanta Housing Authority purchased the Forrest Avenue site and planned a 350-unit complex there, which Black groups had argued for to relieve overcrowding in the Sweet Auburn area to the west. White homeowners complained that this would mean Black encroachment eastwards, and so City Council aldermen refused rezone the site, offering instead to clean up the Buttermilk Bottom slum.[3]

In 1987 the hospital opens a medical-psychiatric unit. Today the unit is one of only six university-affiliated units especially for children in the United States.

The hospital is now a part of Children's Healthcare of Atlanta (CHOA). CHOA formed in 1998 when Egleston Children's Health Care System and Scottish Rite Medical Center came together, becoming one of the largest pediatric systems in the United States.

The City of Atlanta annexed the hospital site effective January 1, 2018.[4] The health system had requested that the Atlanta city government annex the area including Egleston Hospital. Previously the headquarters were in an unincorporated area,[5] statistically counted in the Druid Hills census-designated place.[6]

References
  1. 1928 map of Atlanta at Emory digital collections
  2. ""EDWARD L. DAUGHERTY, A SOUTHERN LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT", Garden Citings, Cherokee Gardens Library Newsletter, 2008" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2011-07-25. Retrieved 2011-05-19.
  3. Stephen Grant Meyer, As long as they don't move next door: segregation and racial conflict in American neighborhoods
  4. Niesse, Mark. "City of Atlanta's expansion to Emory and CDC approved". Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Retrieved December 5, 2017. The city’s 744-acre addition covers [...] Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta.
  5. Torpy, Bill (2017-08-07). "Torpy at Large: DeKalb has annexation anxiety over Emory, CDC". Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Retrieved 2020-03-11.
  6. "2010 CENSUS - CENSUS BLOCK MAP: Druid Hills CDP, GA." U.S. Census Bureau. Retrieved on June 1, 2017. Compare this with the address of the hospital: "1405 Clifton Road NE, Atlanta, GA 30322-1062"


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