Mercy Medical Center (Baltimore, Maryland)


Mercy Medical Center is a hospital located in Baltimore, Maryland. Mercy has been recognized as the #2 hospital in the State of Maryland for 2014-15 by U.S. News & World Report.

Current Facility

The landmark McCauley Tower building of the hospital along St. Paul Place to the west of North Calvert Street, opened in 1963 and is located at 301 St. Paul Place. Its form was quite unusual in that the upper two-thirds of the building of tan/light brown bricks spread out fifty yards out above the lower five stories. Additionally the later Mary Bunting Tower skyscraper buildings and annexes further north along the east side of St. Paul Place and North Calvert Street to East Pleasant Street, and to the next block at the elevated Orleans Street Viaduct were built in the mid-2010s with additional parking garages attached to the east along Guilford Avenue.

History

Founding

Historically, Mercy was founded as "Baltimore City Hospital" by six Sisters of Mercy, a Roman Catholic order of nuns, on November 11, 1874, which was a merger of the Washington University School of Medicine ;. A collection of Baltimore City Hospitals' papers can be found at the National Library of Medicine.

Expansion

Initially, the Mercy Hospital expanded to the north with buildings along Calvert Street towards East Pleasant Street. By the mid-1950s, the Hospital acquired the structures to the west along St. Paul Street/former Courtland Street, north of East Saratoga and south of East Pleasant Streets, which formerly housed the offices of the Baltimore City Department of Public Welfare. These buildings had served the poor and destitute of Baltimore for several decades and a newer renovated structure was now being created on Greenmount Avenue near East Oliver Streets by the Green Mount Cemetery in the early 1950s. So the old Public Welfare structures were available for Mercy to expand into temporarily and later to replace with a new landmark symbol and tower.
Eventually the Mercy medical hospital and nursing school expanded to the west along East Saratoga Street to the neighboring Saint Paul Place