Today we are profiling the former Holy Ghost Hospital at 1575 Cambridge Street — later Youville Hospital, and now the Spaulding Hospital for Continuing Medical Care Cambridge, a multi-building campus, part of the Spaulding Rehabilitation Network.
The Holy Ghost Hospital for Incurables was established around 1893-1894 by Cambridge’s Reverend Thomas Scully and the Sisters of Charity of Montreal (the “Grey Nuns”), an order founded by St. Marguerite d’Youville in 1737. The hospital was founded on St. Marguerite’s vision to care for patients “regardless of their race, religion, or ability to pay,” along with the Reverend Scully’s dream of a hospital that would serve those with chronic illness and disabilities.
Scully chose the name Holy Ghost after the Sancto Spiritu Hospital in Rome, which he had visited as a student in that city. Scully deeded six acres of land for the new hospital at Cambridge Street and Hovey Avenue, previously the Hovey estate.
In 1894 the hospital welcomed their first patient to their first facility, a partially completed 24-bed “cottage” designed by W.H. and J.A. McGinty. In this first year, the Grey Nuns cared for 12 patients at a time. In 1895 construction began on a 75-bed, four-story brick and stone building to replace the cottage (the cottage was razed in 1949). Officially dedicated in 1898, the new building was U-shaped with a projecting center pavilion, and featured quoins, window surrounds, and trim in Indiana limestone. It also featured a chapel, which until the early 2000s held regular Mass for its patients.
A prospectus of 1896 in “The Catholic Church of New England” reads that the hospital site is:
“happily located on Cambridge Street, in the very heart of Cambridge, and contains about 6 acres of beautiful land, upon which are many handsome elm trees, which add greatly to the scenery…The main building will be of brick, with stone and terra cotta trimmings, and slated roof, and will be fireproof, and in every respect modern. In this building will be the reception rooms, dispensary, rooms for medical staff and chaplain, and other offices. The administration building, with its adjoining wards, will be built well back toward the rear of the lot…leaving the open space in front of the administration building for drives, walks, lawns, fountains, and flowers.”
Multiple additions were made to the hospital campus over the years, including a carriage shed and stable in 1901 and 1903; nurses dormitory in 1905; balconies in 1911; hospital laundry and a five-story addition in 1924; a west wing in 1927, which would add 90 patient beds; and many additions and alterations between 1941 and 1997, including a new nurses dormitory and an east wing. These later additions would obscure the original building and today it is hard to imagine the original structures.
The hospital was active during major health emergencies in Cambridge, including the 1918-1919 Influenza epidemic.
The CHC holds a small collection of photographs from the family of Claire Lawrence Levesque, a nurse’s aide at Holy Ghost Hospital during the 1920s and 1930s. Not much is known about Levesque’s time at the hospital, but her photos give a personal glimpse into life there in the 1920s (most of the photos are before the addition of the new wing in 1926-1927).
In 1947 the hospital opened a cancer research unit, and in 1952 they opened an inpatient and outpatient rehabilitation unit. In 1953 Dr. Charles Bonner joined the hospital staff as a cancer researcher with an interest in rehabilitation. Bonner, a former Boston University School of Medicine professor, was also one of the first African-American graduates of the school, and he would become a leader in the rehabilitation field.
In 1959 the Cardinal Cushing Rehabilitation Center opened at the hospital, and in 1970 the hospital joined the Covenant Health Systems and was re-dedicated as Youville Hospital & Rehabilitation Center, a 305-bed care facility for elders and those in need of rehabilitation.
In 2001 Youville Hospital joined with Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital, and in 2009 Spaulding purchased Youville, officially changing the hospital’s name to Spaulding Hospital Cambridge. Today, in addition to their site in Cambridge, Spaulding Hospital has sites in Brighton, Medford, Malden, Boston, and beyond. Their Cambridge location continues to serve as a certified long-term acute care hospital and an outpatient rehabilitation center. They are the home of innovative research programs of the Spaulding Rehabilitation Network, including the Cardiovascular Research Lab, Exercise for Persons with Disabilities (ExPD), the Spaulding National Running Center, and the INSPIRE Lab for Sensorimotor Rehabilitation & Engineering Technologies. The campus also includes Youville House at 1573 Cambridge St, an assisted living residence established in 1998.
In December 2020, the City of Cambridge announced that they would be leasing space at Spaulding Hospital for the new Transition Wellness Center (TWC), a temporary (24 months) 58-bed emergency homeless shelter for adults who test negative for COVID-19. Residents from the shelter at the War Memorial Recreation Center would be transitioned to TWC. The City-funded TWC is located on the first and second floors of the east wing of Spaulding, which were previously vacant (the rest of this wing has been used largely for equipment storage rather than patient care for many years). In the beginning of the pandemic in March, Spaulding’s fourth floor of this building also served as a recovery center for COVID-19 patients.
For more information on the evolution of the hospital over the years, including a historical pamphlet and photographs, please contact us at chcarchives@cambridgema.gov.
Sources:
CHC survey file, 1575 Cambridge Street
“Celebrating the Generations 1895-1995,” Youville Hospital & Rehabilitation Center pamphlet, CHC Library.
Boston’s Hidden Sacred Spaces: http://www.hiddensacredspaces.org/spaulding-rehabilitation-hospital-chapel-and-meditation-room-cambridge
Spaulding Hospital: https://spauldingrehab.org/locations/cambridge-continuing-medical-care
Well done. I’ve always thought that the “for Incurables” part of the name was awful–what a message to send to patients! Abandon hope, all ye who enter here. Or, to be more 20th century, like checking into Hotel California.