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Building

Six nuns from the Daughters of Charity of Saint Vincent de Paul arrived to minister to the needs of the poor in 1856. These six, Sisters Scholastica Logsden (the leader), Ann Gillen, Angelita Mombrado, Clara de Cisneros and Francesca Fernandez, began their journey from Maryand to New York, and from New York to Panama in the Fall of 1855. Two of the nuns, Logsden and Gillen, were from a nunnery in Emmitsburg, MD, the three others had come from Spain. They traveled by mule across the Isthmus of Panama and then sailed from there to San Francisco, CA. They remained briefly in San Francisco, and took a steamer down to Los Angeles's port of San Pedro, enduring a harrowing, six-hour stage coach ride to the tiny, dusty hamlet of Los Angeles. Soon after their arrival, officials asked the women to open a hospital to treat indigent patients as well as other townspeople in need. (See Daughters of Charity of Saint Vincent de Paul, "Los Angeles," accessed 05/04/2017.)

By 1858, they had secured a land parcel and built a crude hospital that the County of Los Angeles subsidized to the tune of $1 per patient, although this fee was lowered by 1871 to 75 cents. The Sister's of Charity hospital operated at Alameda Street and Macy Street (renamed in 1994 as "Cesar E. Chavez Avenue" after the pioneering migrant workers' advocate) for about a decade; sometime in the 1860s, a new hospital was opened at North Main and San Fernando Streets.

PCAD id: 21204