University of Pennsylvania Finding Aids

This collection contains records of the Germantown Hospital and Community Health Services School of Nursing, in Germantown, Philadelphia, PA. Materials include student records, Nursing Alumni Association records, yearbooks, and minutes.

This collection chronicles the long history of one of Philadelphia's most respected diploma schools of nursing, that of the Lankenau Hospital. It contains records which span the entire life of the school, from its inception in 1899 (at Lankenau's institutional predecessor, the German Hospital) to its eventual close in May of 1992.

The Mercy-Douglass Hospital was an African-American hospital and the first black nurse training school in in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It existed from 1895-1960. This collection contains the institutional records of Mercy-Douglass, along with over 200 photographs of the hospital and nursing school.

This collection documents the founding, flourishing and eventual closing of the Presbyterian School of Nursing, a hospital-based nursing school in Philadelphia. The hospital itself was founded in 1871 under the sponsorship of the Presbyterian Church. Its nurse training program was begun in 1889. The collection's strength is the relative completeness of student records, good documentation of the school's curricula and teaching materials. The supportive role both the Ladies Aid Society and the Alumni Association played in the growth of the School are evident in these records.

The Starr Centre was a settlement house with an extensive array of programs in South Philadelphia and Germantown. Through its Medical Department and a cooperative agreement (later a merger) with the Visiting Nurse Society of Philadelphia, the Starr Centre provided home health care to Philadelphia's African American and immigrant communities. This collection contains the agency's administrative records documenting its long history of service, as well as photographs, artifacts, and scrapbooks.

The records of the Visiting Nurse Association of Allegheny County document a wide range of issues in home nursing that appeared in the period from the association’s founding in 1919, up to the high-tech period of home care in the 1980s. The collection includes Board of Directors minutes, committee reports, and some substation files. There is a significant amount of material documenting the advances in the agency’s health care practices. One of the ways that home care changed was in moving away from the care of patients with declining communicable diseases such as tuberculosis, and moving towards more specialized care like chemotherapy. This collection also includes 300 photographs and several scrapbooks.

The records of the Visiting Nurse Society of Philadelphia document a wide range of themes and issues in home nursing and the care of the indigent poor. The collection includes trustees' minutes, board correspondence, committee reports, and branch association files. Also included is a well documented collection of photographs.

This collection contains records relating to the Woman's Hospital of Philadelphia. Materials include historical accounts, administrative records, board minutes, annual reports, correspondence, and photographs.