The first building of the University of Virginia Hospital opened on April 13, 1901. The designs for the 150-bed hospital were developed by the architect Paul J. Pelz. The hospital is under the direction of Dr. Paul Barringer, a leader of the eugenics movement and the hospital becomes an academic center of eugenics. To ensure adequate staffing of the hospital, the University of Virginia opened a trained school for nurses in the same year. Student nurses learned on the job working ten to twelve hours a day for two years before obtaining their degree. Both the hospital and the School of Nursing were established as segregated institutions. Until the 1960s, the hospital racially discriminated against African American patients and physicians, denying Black physicians hospital privileges and serving Black patients in segregated wards located in the hospital's basement level. Black women (and all men, regardless of race), were denied admission to the School of Nursing. Until the 1960s, the School of Nursing remains segregated with an all-white student body and faculty.
1901
Historical Collections, Claude Moore Health Sciences Library, University of Virginia
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