Saint Paul University Hospital is no more.
UT Southwestern Medical Center demolished the historic, 50-year-old healthcare facility Sunday morning, reducing it to a pile of dust and rubble. In recent years, the hospital was frequently at capacity yet too old to sustain the required renovation, UT Southwestern officials have said. The academic medical center began raising money for a new hospital to replace it at the end of the last decade, securing a $100 million gift from former Texas Gov. William P. Clement Jr. in 2009.
The hospital bearing his name opened about five years later off Harry Hines Boulevard, bringing Dallas a new 12 floor, 460-bed, $800 million facility for care. Saint Paul was decommissioned when Clements began seeing patients last October and flagged for eventual demolition. That came Sunday, when the building was imploded and collapsed in on itself. Eventually, the university says it plans to build a training center as well as an outpatient clinic where it stood.
“We will always have a special place in our hearts for St. Paul,” said Becky McCulley, Chief Operations Officer for UT Southwestern University Hospitals, last year. “At the same time, we’re excited to begin the next era of service to the community in our new hospital.”
The Saint Paul that crumbled on Sunday was 50 years old, but the hospital’s roots stretch back to the late 1800s. The original three story, 110-bed hospital broke ground at Hall and Bryan Streets in 1896 when Dallas had a population of just 37,000. The hospital treated patients through the Spanish flu outbreak in 1918. Forty-five tents got set up on its lawn when its patients spilled past capacity. It survived a five-alarm fire in 1951, getting all 250 patients and staff evacuated without major injuries.
It was the first Dallas hospital to grant admitting privileges to black physicians, doing so in 1954. It was the first to grant full-staff status to African American doctors, marking that in 1956. In 1963, it opened a new, updated hospital in the 5900 block of Harry Hines Blvd.
In 1985, surgeons at St. Paul made it Dallas’ first hospital to successfully transplant a heart. It paired with UT Southwestern soon after, becoming the St. Paul Medical Center. It grew its lung transplantation program throughout the 1990s and housed a high-risk maternity unit and surgical intensive care. UT Southwestern bought the hospital in December 2000 and renamed it St. Paul University Hospital. It joined Zale Lipshy University Hospital in UT Southwestern’s parent management company, University Medical Center, Inc. But by 2005, the school realized that it likely wouldn’t be possible to renovate it and plans began to come up with a way to replace the facility.
Ten years later, it made it to 50. Now, just like that, it is gone.
