DENVER (KDVR) — Saint Joseph Hospital originated with four women from Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth, Kansas and $9 to start a hospital. From a small cottage in 1873, St. Joseph is now coming up on its 150th anniversary.
On Sept. 22, 1873, the four women raised funding to open a cottage at the intersection of 14th Avenue and Arapahoe Street, which started the organization that became Saint Joseph Hospital.
After many relocations and donations from Colorado governors, the Sisters landed on their site on 18th Avenue in 1876.
The building was a ginormous upgrade from the original cottage. It was a $40,000, three-story brick building with 30 hospital beds. It was coined St. Joseph’s. Within the first year, patients almost doubled from 88 to 168.
Saint Joseph’s nurses from 1906. (Courtesy of Saint Joseph Hospital) 
NBC television crew and Tom Snyder (“Tomorrow” show) interview Sister Mary Andrew Talle, SCL in October 1977 in preparation for a documentary called “Medicine in America”. The documentary was aired on Jan. 4, 1978. Photo was featured in the Saint Joseph Hospital Towerscope publication, November, 1977, Volume 14, Number 11. 
In 1873 Sister Joanna Bruner moved into a six-room brick house donated by Mrs. William Perry. Three more Sisters arrived on September 14. The four Sisters opened St. Vincent’s Hospital in Denver (what would become Saint Joseph Hospital) on September 22, 1873. They soon moved to larger quarters on Market Street between 25th and 26th Streets, joined by three more Sisters. This drawing, most likely by the hospital’s graphic designer Kenneth Scott, appeared in the October 1971 issue of Towerscope, an employee newsletter. Based on a drawing by Alan Ayers of the Denver Post for Rocky Mountain Medical Journal, April 1971, it may depict the house on Market Street. They relocated several times before building a new hospital on the 18th and Humboldt site in 1876. (Gilmore, Julia. We Came North: Centennial Story of the Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth. Printed by Abbey Press, St. Meinrad, Indiana, 1961, p. 41-2.). 
Donations from Colorado Governors William Gilpin and John Evans brought the Sisters to their permanent site on 18th Avenue. Built from the ground up, the $40,000 three-story brick 30-bed hospital was named St. Joseph’s Hospital to honor the foster father of Jesus as well as Bishop Joseph Machebeuf, who had invited the Sisters to Colorado. In its first year of operation, patient count rose from 88 to 168. According to most records left by the Sisters of Charity, the hospital was built and put to use in 1876. Other sources indicate that the structure wasn’t completed until 1878 (Fishell, Dave. Towers of Healing: The First 125 Years of Denver’s Saint Joseph Hospital. Denver, Colorado: Saint Joseph Hospital Foundation, 1999, p 45.) 
Springtime exterior view of St. Joseph’s Hospital, Denver, Colorado; located at 18th (Eighteenth) Avenue and Humboldt Street, original structure completed in 1878; includes three-story addition in 1890; sidewalk bordered by trees. (Courtesy of Denver Public Library) 
Exterior view of Saint Joseph Hospital at 18th (Eighteenth) Avenue and Humboldt Street in the City Park West neighborhood of Denver, Colorado. The building is a Victorian Gothic style structure with beveled towers, decorative stone bands, terra cotta embellishments, and a carriage porch entry. A car is parked on the street nearby. 
A woman walks on a sidewalk near Saint Joseph Hospital on Humboldt Street in the City Park West neighborhood of Denver, Colorado. A modern brick addition is connected to an older section of the hospital. A pair of beveled towers and a brick vehicle entry are in the distance. 
This photo was taken from the intersection of 18th Avenue and Humboldt Street, shortly before the 1900 Towers were razed. The red brick old towers face Humboldt Street and the 1964 building to the east faces Franklin Street. 
The current Saint Joseph Hospital opened December 13, 2014, at 19th and Downing, just west of the previous hospital. The seven-story facility is 831,321 square feet and has 400 licensed beds, including 47 Emergency Department beds, a 30-bed neonatal intensive care unit, a roof-top helicopter pad and an attached chapel. The hospital was designed to maximize natural light and provide patient rooms with outdoor spaces and scenic views. 
Saint Joseph Hospital celebrates 150 years (Courtesy of Saint Joseph Hospital)
While the patient numbers were going up, the hospital still had a long way to go. In 1898, the cost of patient care was 93 cents per day. At this time, daily products like antibiotics and sunscreen still weren’t invented.
Sixty years later in 1948, the minimum wage was 40 cents per hour and the cost of a bed went up to $13.80 per day.
Over 100 years later, the building sits at East 19th Avenue and North Downing Street. It’s seven stories with 400 hospital beds, an emergency department, a neonatal intensive care unit, a roof-top helicopter pad and an attached chapel.
St. Joe’s has more than 2,600 caregivers, nearly 1,600 physicians and advance practice providers and more than 150 volunteers, according to Intermountain Health.
The hospital’s estimated revenue is now over $4 billion.
St. Joseph’s survived tuberculosis, the Spanish-American War, the Vietnam War, the Great Depression and every other illness throughout the late 1800s and 1900s that came without antibiotics or a vaccine.
As a hospital that came from $9 and four sisters, it’s now the largest teaching hospital in Denver and is reaching its 150th anniversary as one of Denver’s top hospitals.
