As we continue to watch HUP’s future rise in the new Pavilion, it’s a good time to also look back at HUP’s many changes since opening 235 years ago. As you’ll see in this mini-series, growth and expansion are part of our heritage!
In the Beginning
HUP was opened in 1874, after the University relocated from Fourth Street to West Philadelphia. Previously Pennsylvania Hospital had served as the clinical teaching site for Penn’s medical students, but the move into the “suburbs” across the river made that impractical.
Like many things at Penn Medicine, HUP was ahead of its time. It was the first general hospital in the U.S. expressly designed and built by a university to provide bedside teaching facilities for its medical school. According to an article in the Journal of Medical Biography, this close proximity to the medical school made it easier to incorporate clinical instruction into the medical curriculum. It would be 10 years before Johns Hopkins followed suit!