It was 150 years ago, during a typhoid outbreak on a ship docked in Old Town, that Alexandria hospital started. The community is now celebrating Inova Alexandria Hospital’s 150 years of caring.
"In 1872, fearing a typhoid epidemic among crew on board a ship in Old Town Alexandria’s harbor, Julia Johns calls upon a group of 'charitably disposed' female friends at St. Paul’s Church and formed the Alexandria Infirmary Association," according to Inova Health System.
Johns, the daughter of an Episcopal bishop in Alexandria, was credited with creating a “society to establish and control a hospital for the sick” in 1872, said Hospital President Dr. Rina Bansal. The original hospital opened as an infirmary at the corner of Duke and South Fairfax Streets, with the help of an all-female board of trustees. The first purpose-built hospital was built in 1917 on the 700 block of Duke Street.
While the location has changed a few times, the hospital is the longest continually-operating hospital in Virginia.
It also has a variety of other "firsts" — including having the first 24/7 emergency department in the United States. Alexandria Hospital also opened the first nursing school in Virginia in 1985 and was the first hospital on the East Coast to use an epidural in obstetrics in the 1950s.
Today, the Alexandria Hospital sits near the top of Seminary Hill, but not for long. In the next few years, a new hospital will rise at the site of the former Landmark Mall and the current hospital will be decommissioned.
The Alexandria History Museum at the Lyceum currently has an exhibit focused on the history of the hospital, including
