Clinical Care
December 16, 2019

Michigan Medicine kicks off celebration of 150th anniversary

A celebration begins today, marking many of the medical and life sciences milestones and achievements that have happened at U-M and helped transform care everywhere

The professor's house that was converted to become the first U-M hospital.
The professor's house that was converted to become the first U-M hospital

One hundred and fifty years ago this month, something extraordinary happened at the University of Michigan. Its effects have reverberated down through history — not only on the campus, but across the state and nation.

In December 1869, the first patients checked in to the university’s first hospital.

It wasn’t a fancy facility – just 20 beds in a converted former professor’s house on North University Avenue, where the Chemistry Building now stands.

Its patients had to travel across the Diag, to the Medical School building built 20 years before, to have an operation or examination by a professor with hundreds of medical students looking on.

But its opening marked the first time an American university had run a hospital, adding patient care to its missions of medical education and research. The birth of the academic medical center now known as Michigan Medicine began a movement that spread to universities across the country, and accelerated medical innovation.

A celebration of that 150th birthday begins today, and will continue through most of 2020, marking many of the medical and life sciences milestones and achievements that have happened at U-M and helped transform care everywhere.

Read more about 150 years of Michigan Medicine — including a timeline of historical events and key facts about our history — in the Michigan Medicine Newsroom.

Michigan Medicine kicks off celebration of 150th anniversary (link is external)