This hospital started by two sisters has become a vital part of Kansas City health care
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Because it’s been such a prominent fixture on Hospital Hill since 1970, many of us don’t realize that Children’s Mercy Hospital moved there from Independence Avenue.
This postcard calls the building Mercy Hospital, but the institution’s name was actually changed to Children’s Mercy Hospital in 1904. That was shortly after Alice Berry Graham and Katharine Berry Richardson (two sisters with medical degrees) opened the hospital’s first incarnation nearby at 414 Highland.
But even before that, the Berry sisters began their commitment to treat the city’s youngest patients by renting supplies and bed space in a maternity hospital on Cleveland Avenue. Their creative solution to breaching the era’s male-dominated healthcare system was called the Free Bed Fund Association for Crippled, Deformed and Ruptured Children.
Sadly, Alice Graham died in 1913, four years before the location at Independence and Woodland Avenues opened. Katharine lived until 1933---long enough to see more and more benefactors embrace the sisters’ vision of a top-quality pediatric hospital.
When Children’s Mercy moved to its current location on Gillham Road, the Kansas City College of Osteopathic Medicine snapped it up to serve as the school’s administration building, a function it still provides (with considerable updates inside) for what’s now known as Kansas City University.
Looking for more Kansas City history?
General Hospital #1 and General Hospital #2--a pair of buildings that tell a tale of segregated healthcare in Kansas City
How the drugstore chain with the best sign ever, Katz Drugs, took root here
The winding roads of Cliff Drive made northeast KC a mecca for early auto owners
This story was originally published March 20, 2024 at 6:00 AM.