Our History

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our history

. . . and Our Progress

Circa 1900 Evansville was a flourishing river city with a population of more than 50,000, and a new hospital was badly needed. At that time, an amazing discovery called electricity was promising a better way of life, and the country was enjoying an era that would later be known as the "Gay Nineties."

Following the tradition of the Deaconess Movement, the Protestant Deaconess Association called on Bethesda Deaconess Hospital in Chicago, Illinois, for the guidance it needed to plan a new hospital. One year later, a nurse arrived from Chicago, and four Evansville physicians were appointed as Deaconess staff members. The hospital's first work was restricted to private medical care, but in June 1893, the Association bought a home on the corner of Mary and Iowa streets which was converted to a 19-bed hospital. It was a crude beginning for an institution that would be come the largest hospital in Southern Indiana.

Circa 1950 A three-story brick hospital was completed in 1899 and was celebrated as one of the most impressive Deaconess institutions in the country. The new Deaconess Hospital had beds for more than 60 patients. It boasted three operating rooms with hot and cold sterilized water and "good lighting, so that operations could be performed with the same degree of safety day or night."

Five nurses (Deaconesses) graduated during the same year from a nurse training program that would become the Deaconess School of Nursing. The Deaconesses not only cared for patients, but were expected to fill coal bins, mop floors and carry out most other housekeeping chores. The work was grueling, and the days were long. The profession called for total commitment.

In the 1920s, Deaconess added a fourth floor and a new wing to the original building. Further construction in 1948 provided administrative offices, two nursing units and a new entrance for the growing hospital. When the Hahn Building was completed in 1960, Deaconess became the second largest general nonvoluntary, nongovernmental hospital in Indiana.

During the years that followed, the hospital of the past yielded to the modern, ever-changing Deaconess of today. The original hospital was demolished in the early 1970s. Major construction throughout the last twenty years has resulted in a campus which now encompasses 20 city blocks.

Circa 1996 Modern health care has undoubtedly reached levels of sophistication only dreamed of by the men and women who founded Deaconess Hospital more than a century ago. But the convictions on which the hospital was built - compassionate care, quality caregivers and commitment to service and medical science - remain the same.