Atlanta’s oldest hospital: Saint Joseph’s

Atlanta’s oldest and only Catholic hospital was established in 1880 by Sister Cecilia Carroll, who, along with three other nuns, moved from Savannah to Atlanta with the hopes of opening the city’s first permanent medical facility after the Civil War.

Saint Joseph’s, originally named Atlanta Hospital, opened a nursing school in 1900, where more than 1,300 nurses were trained before its closing in 1973. The hospital soon became the region’s largest hospital and moved to north Atlanta in 1978.

Among many other firsts, Saint Joseph’s was the first hospital in the Southeast to perform open-heart surgery in 1957.

– Caroline Parsley, The 100 Companies