St. Paul’s Sanitarium. (Photo courtesy of UT Southwestern.)
The last time Dallas was locked down because of a viral infection, an East Dallas hospital was influential in fighting the outbreak.
In 1896, St. Paul’s Sanitarium opened in a temporary building at the corner of Bryan and Hall streets, according to a City of Dallas Office of Historic Preservation article written by Jennifer Anderson. It was located there for two years until its main building was completed next to Exall Park, near where Baylor University Medical Center is located today.
Catholic nurses from the Daughters of Charity of Saint Vincent de Paul tended to patients in the hospitals 110 beds. Twenty years after its opening, hospital staff were overwhelmed with residents seeking treatment for the Spanish flu.
Dallas’ first recorded death during the 1918 pandemic was 15-year-old resident, Pierpont Balderson, who died at St. Paul’s Sanitarium, the Office of Historic Preservation reported. At least 9,000 people in Dallas contracted the disease, and 250 died between Sept. 24 and Nov. 2, 1918, according to influenzaarchive.org.
Tents constructed at St. Paul’s Sanitarium during the 1918 flu pandemic. (Photo courtesy of UT Southwestern.)
Many nurses at St. Paul’s served during the pandemic and contracted the virus. That caused a nursing shortage, but volunteers continued to help patients in 45 tents erected on hospital grounds, according to the Office of Historic Preservation.
By the spring of 1919, the virus had abated.
St. Paul’s Sanitarium —located next to a former freedmen’s town — is notable not only for its response to the flu pandemic, but also for being the first Dallas hospital to allow African-American doctors to practice in its buildings, according to the Office of Historic Preservation.
Several expansions, including a School of Nursing, were made to the building over the next 70 years. In 1964, the hospital moved to the Southwestern Medical Center Campus on Harry Hines Boulevard, the Office of Historic Preservation reported. The original facilities were destroyed four years later.
St. Paul’s Sanitarium later became St. Paul University Hospital and merged with UT Southwestern in 2005. “The remaining Daughters of Charity sisters were reassigned to other posts and still serve the Dallas community,” according to the Office of Historic Preservation.
The Bryan Place neighborhood in East Dallas now sits on the original St. Paul’s Sanitarium site.
