Columbia Hospital for Women

Columbia Hospital for Women (1920s)

Columbia Hospital for Women

Location: 2425 L Street, NW, Washington, DC USA

Opened: March 1866; opened at L Street site in 1870

Closed: May 2002

From the U.S. National Library of Medicine site:

Columbia Hospital for Women, which closed in May 2002, was one of the oldest hospitals in Washington, DC and had occupied this site since 1870. Shortly after the Civil War, the Secretary of War E. N. Stanton authorized funds to establish a 50-bed hospital, stipulating that 20 of these beds be reserved for the wives and widows of U.S. soldiers. This was in response to a desperate need for a health-care facility for women who were arriving in the city in search of missing relatives. In March 1866, the hospital opened in the Hill Mansion at Thomas Circle (Massachusetts Avenue and 14th Street) under the name of Columbia Hospital for Women and Lying-in Asylum, and later moved to the Maynard Mansion at Pennsylvania Avenue and 25th Street, its current site. The original mansion was razed during a major renovation in 1914 and replaced by the present main hospital building. The Columbia became a private, non-profit hospital when President Eisenhower signed legislation transferring it to its board of directors in 1953. Columbia Hospital was a pioneer in the implementation of a number of innovative techniques in obstetrics and gynecology, and since its founding in 1866, more than 250,000 babies were delivered at Columbia.

The Columbia Hospital facility has been turned into an upscale condominum complex and is now known as The Columbia Residences of Washington, DC.