Michael Reese Hospital - History

History

Michael Reese was a real estate developer who died in 1877, leaving funds in his will to build a new hospital. Reese's heirs requested that the hospital would be open to all people, regardless of creed, nationality, or race. Construction of the first hospital (on the corner of 29th and Groveland Avenue) was completed in 1880.

The original Michael Reese building was demolished in 1905 and replaced in 1907 by another, larger 1000 Bed, building on the same site.

Louis Katz, the Medical Research Institute's first full-time investigator and former president of the American Heart Association, was one of the first to explore the relation of coronary heart disease to cholesterol concentration in the blood. Cardiovascular Institute researchers Dr. Alfred Pick and Dr. Richard Langendorf, perfected the use of the electrocardiograph.

Leonidas Berry was a pioneer in the development and use of the gastroscope. Dr. Samuel Soskin and Dr. Rachmiel Levine made important discoveries about the "gatekeeper" action in insulin, which is of fundamental importance to the understanding of diabetes. Dr. Albert Milzer and his research team were the first to kill the polio virus and make an effective vaccine against this debilitating virus. The hospital was also the first to have an infant incubator (1915), and the first permanent incubator station for prematurely born babies (1922), both of which were innovated by Dr. Julius Hess.

As early as the 1940s, the area surrounding Michael Reese Hospital was already in economic and physical decline. The hospital, along with Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) and Mercy Catholic Hospital (several blocks away), was one of the businesses in the area responsible for creating the South Side Planning Board. IIT and Michael Reese opted to try urban renewal instead of abandoning the neighborhood altogether.

From 1954 to 1986, the hospital purchased adjacent properties, demolishing structures on those properties, and building additional clinics and pavilions on the growing campus. The new buildings housed many specialty clinics, including a tumor center, a Psychosomatic and Psychiatric Institute, a city public health clinic, a nurse's residence and school building, a heart surgery center, the Siegel Institute for Communicative Disorders, and the Simon Wexler outpatient psychiatric facility. At its height, the hospital had 2,400 beds and was the largest hospital in Chicago. At the time of its closure, there were only 150.

In 1991, Michael Reese Hospital was acquired by Humana. In March 1993, Humana spun off its hospitals under the name Galen Health Care. In June, Galen merged with Columbia Healthcare. In 1994, Columbia merged with HCA to form Columbia/HCA.