Opening its doors on May 10, 1736, Charity was once the second oldest continuously operating hospital in the nation, operating until its closure in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Founded by Jean Louis with the original mission of providing health care to the poor, L’Hospital des Pauvres de la Charité (as it was called then) has had a long and respected tradition of advancing health and medicine.
Charity Hospital had one of the first blood banks in the United States. It has made important advancements as a research center, advancing the diagnosis of sickle cell anemia. It is the site of the first curative surgery for aneurysms and also the site where discoveries in heart disease were made.
The hospital has also played an important role as a teaching facility. Located in the downtown medical district next to the LSU medical school and Tulane School of Medicine, Charity Hospital served as the primary teaching facility for LSU, Tulane, and Delgado Community College Charity School of Nursing. Incredibly, three quarters (75 percent) of Louisiana’s medical professionals were trained at Charity.
Over the years, Charity has become an essential and irreplaceable medical and community institution. The Charity Hospital mission to provide top-notch affordable health care to the citizens of New Orleans is as critical as ever, as the lack of reliable health care continues to be one of the city’s biggest challenges since Hurricane Katrina. We now have the unique opportunity to rebuild Charity Hospital better than it ever was before.
The doctors and nurses who stayed at the hospital through the storm and quickly restored it for returning residents embodied the core principles on which Charity was founded. The decision to keep the building shuttered remains one of the most controversial decisions of the post-storm period. Charity Hospital, the second largest hospital in the country, cradled the births of hundreds of thousands of New Orleans babies, including nearly all of the great musicians, artists, and characters for which this city is most beloved. Memorialized in literature, song, and soul, Charity Hospital is a ubiquitous icon. There is no hospital in the country that means as much to the population it serves as Charity Hospital right here in New Orleans.
The proposed LSU/VA medical complex would permanently abandon Charity Hospital, leaving one of the most beautiful buildings in the city to sit blighted with no plans for reuse.
