Neighborhood News: Streeterville’s Lurie Children’s Hospital- 144 Years of caring for Chicago’ s most vulnerable citizens
When Julia Foster Porter’s son Maurice died at age 13, the devastated family sought to honor his memory by making sure no other child would suffer the same fate.
Thus began the Maurice Porter Memorial Hospital in Lincoln Park. Opened in 1882, today it’s better known as the Ann and Robert Lurie Children’s Hospital, 225 E. Chicago Avenue, a nationally-ranked, award-winning, innovative beacon of care for children worldwide.
“When Julia Foster Porter originally opened the hospital as an eight-bed cottage in Lincoln Park, it was the first children’s hospital in Illinois,” said Thomas Shanley, MD, President & CEO of Lurie Children’s, at their 140th Anniversary Celebration in a press release. “Her vision was to care for sick children irrespective of race, creed and ability to pay. This is the foundation of our current mission, which has evolved beyond exceptional patient care to include groundbreaking research, inspiring education, and relentless advocacy. “
“This mission continues to motivate us each day,” he concluded. “To achieve excellence in all these domains, so that every child has an opportunity for a healthier future.”
An Innovative History
Maurice Porter Memorial Hospital expanded quickly. According to Wikipedia sources, Porter built a three-story replacement hospital with 22 beds. In 1896, Porter planned and supported another expansion that increased the hospital’s capacity to 50 beds.
In 1903, Porter was given a large gift that allowed her to purchase the triangular block of land on which the new Maurice Porter Children’s Hospital was built at Lincoln and Fullerton Avenues. It remained there for 130 years.
The hospital underwent further reorganization in 1904, ultimately changing the hospital’s name from the Maurice Porter Children’s Hospital to Children’s Memorial Hospital (CMH). A few years later, in 1907 the hospital was gifted an X-ray machine by local philanthropist, John Borland. In the 1940s, doctors from CMH pioneered one of the earliest pediatric surgery programs in the country. Surgeons Willis J. Potts and Sidney Smith invented a number of surgical tools used to operate on blood vessels and they devised a new surgery to treat ‘blue baby syndrome’(cyanosis).
In the 1960s, Children’s Memorial Hospital’s Department of Anesthesia first established a pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) at CMH with the capacity of 10 beds.
In June 1979, former McDonald’s CEO, Ray Kroc made a donation to the hospital that funded the addition of a three-story building named the “Ray A. Kroc Diagnostic and Treatment Center” in his honor. The building included new operating rooms, a new 25-bed emergency department and a radiology suite.
The hospital continued expanding through 2012, when it moved to its current location in Streeterville, following a $100 million gift from philanthropist Ann Lurie.
The new 1.25-million-square-foot facility allowed the hospital to be closer to its academic partner, the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. Now with 360 beds, the hospital provides comprehensive pediatric specialties and subspecialties to infants, children, teens, and young adults aged 0–21 throughout Illinois and surrounding regions.
During the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, Lurie Children’s Hospital loaned out many of their ventilators to adult hospitals in the area (including neighboring Northwestern Memorial Hospital) to help deal with the adult ventilator shortage.
“All, for your one”
Lurie Children’s rallying cry sums up its mission: Whether it’s cutting-edge research, community advocacy or the very best clinical care, everything is driven by an intense passion to help kids become healthy, happy adults. Each year, more than 266,000 children receive medical care at Lurie Children’s.
Specialties and Services Today
The Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago has a variety of patient care units to care for pediatric patients aged 0–21:
- 48-bed general medical & medical observation units
- 40-bed pediatric intensive care unit (PICU)
- 48-bed pediatric hematology and oncology unit
- 44-bed cardiac care unit
- 64-bed neonatal intensive care unit (NICU)
- 45-bed emergency department
- 23-bed pre and post operative
- 12-bed psychiatric unit (ages 3–17)
In addition to the pediatric patient care units, Lurie Children’s Hospital has 21 operating rooms. Their sky garden helps relax families at the hospital. The hospital affiliated with a nearby Ronald McDonald Children’s House to help support families during a child’s critical illness.
Sibling Support
Siblings are often the most overlooked part of the equation when a child is hospitalized. Yet their emotional well-being is essential to how the entire family copes. When caregivers must focus much of their attention on the sick child, siblings may feel lonely, angry, jealous, fearful, or confused. These responses are normal, but they still require care and understanding. Special attention is paid to siblings of critically ill children to ensure “whole-family” health and wellness.
Leader in LGBTQ+
Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago was recognized as a “Leader in LGBTQ Healthcare Equality” by the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) Foundation, the educational arm of the country’s largest lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) civil rights organization.
In 2017, they earned the Business Leadership Award from Equality Illinois, an organization dedicated to advancing equal treatment and social justice through education, advocacy and protection of the rights of the LGBT community.
For more information on Ann and Robert Lurie Children’s Hospital, and its myriad specialties and services, click here.
Alison Moran-Powers and Dean’s Team Chicago
