Historic Griffin Hospital and Nurses’ Home (1910-1931)
The Nurses’ Inn and National Nursing Museum is located at 522 Meriwether Street in Griffin, Georgia, on the site of the historic Griffin Hospital and Nurses’ Home at the corner of Meriwether and West College Streets.
The Griffin Hospital and Nurses’ Home opened in 1910, and was the second hospital in Griffin. It replaced the first hospital, which was located in an Antebellum home on the corner of 6th and Solomon Streets. When the first hospital was torn down to make way for construction of the old City Hall, materials were salvaged and reused to build the new hospital. The building was designed and plans donated by the famous Atlanta architect Haralson Bleckley, and represents one of the few surviving examples of his work.
Originally, the hospital also had a School of Nursing and residence quarters for nurses was on the second floor of the building. At the time it was not uncommon for nurses to work and live on the hospital campus.
Nurses were educated, lived and cared for the patients in the hospital around the clock, 24/7/365.
Nurses were responsible for patient care, preparing food and laundry service, which in that era was done by hand. There were no medical specialists, so nurses were the ones on the front lines and they assisted in all areas of the hospital’s operations. The requirement for entering into the nursing school was that all nurses had to be single.
By 1915, a separate house had been built next to the hospital and served as the Nurses’ Home. A third building located at the rear of the property housed a patient ward.
On February 28, 1931, the Griffin Hospital and Nurses’ Home closed after the City of Griffin purchased the privately-owned Strickland Memorial Hospital located on West College Street to use as the new Griffin Hospital.
Let’s build something together.
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