Historical Timeline
1854
Atlanta Medical School, precursor to Emory's medical school, is chartered by the city. The school is the oldest and largest of the entrepreneurial medical schools in the city.
1892
Grady Memorial Hospital opens to serve indigent patients. Grady was a training facility for all of Emory's antecedent medical schools and has been an official Emory training affiliate since 1930.
1904
Wesley Memorial Hospital, the forerunner of Emory University Hospital, is founded in an antebellum home on Courtland Avenue. It moves to Emory's campus in 1922 and is renamed in 1932.
1905
Administrators of Wesley Memorial Hospital open a training school for nurses to provide health care for the hospital's patients. The nursing school later became a school within Emory University in 1944 and was renamed Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing in 1967.
1908
The Davis-Fischer Sanatorium, forerunner to Emory Crawford Long Hospital, opens on Crew Street and soon moved to Linden Avenue. Renamed for Crawford Long in 1931 and deeded to Emory in 1939, the hospital comes under Emory management in 1953. It is now known as Emory Crawford Long Hospital.
1915
Medical College joins Emory College, which was expanding to Atlanta from Oxford, Ga., and becomes Emory University School of Medicine.
1937
With a gift of $50,000, Robert W. Woodruff, legendary leader of The Coca-Cola Company, established the Winship Cancer Center, named for his grandfather, who died of the disease.
1946
Emory takes on medical supervision of Lawson Veterans Administration Hospital. Later, the medical school's dean advocates for a new facility, which opens near Emory's campus in 1967.
1947
Dr. Phinizy Calhoun performs Georgia's first corneal transplant at Emory University Hospital. Dr. Bruce Logue establishes Emory's first cardiology residency at Grady Hospital.
1953
The Emory Clinic, the private practice of Emory's clinical faculty, is established.
1956
Emory purchases a primate research facility in Orange Park, Florida (now known as Yerkes Regional Primate Research Center). Yerkes moves to Emory's campus in 1965.
1959
Henrietta Egleston Hospital for Children (now Children's Healthcare of Atlanta at Egleston) relocates to the Emory campus. The hospital was founded in 1928.
1962
Dr. Charles Hatcher performs Georgia's first blue baby operation using open heart surgery. In 1963 he performs the state's first aortic valve replacement.
1966
The Woodruff Medical Center (now Woodruff Health Sciences Center) is established to bring together those components of Emory involved in patient care, teaching of health professionals, health-related research, and policies for prevention and treatment of disease. This same year, Dr. Garland Perdue performs Georgia's first kidney transplant.
1970
Dr. Charles Hatcher performs Georgia's first successful coronary bypass.
1979
Emory University receives $105 million from the Emily and Ernest Woodruff Foundation, the largest gift to an educational institution in U.S. history. This same year, Dr. Ralph Vogler performs Emory's first bone marrow transplant on a patient with acute leukemia.
1980
Dr. Andreas Gruentzig, developer of angioplasty, joins the Emory faculty and continues to perfect the procedure that changed forever the treatment of atherosclerosis. (He died in a plane crash in 1985.)
1985
Surgeons at Emory perform Atlanta's first heart transplant.
1986
Atlanta industrialist O. Wayne Rollins donates $10 million for construction of the Rollins Research Center.
1987
Dr. John Douglas performs the first coronary stent implant in the country. This same year, Wesley Woods Geriatric Hospital is opened, and the Emory/Georgia Tech Biomedical Research Consortium is established. Emory doctors perform the state's first liver transplant.
1988
Dr. Kirk Kanter performs the state's first pediatric heart transplant.
1989
Emory surgeons perform Georgia's first kidney-pancreas transplant.
1990
Named for donor O. Wayne Rollins, the Rollins Research Center is completed, adding 75 labs to Emory's research facilities.
1990
Rollins School of Public Health is established.
1996
The Woodruff family of foundations creates the Robert W. Woodruff Fund with grants of Coca-Cola stock totaling $295 million to help support the health sciences center named for Robert Woodruff and the Winship Cancer Center (now Winship Cancer Institute) named for Woodruff's grandfather.
1997
Emory Healthcare is created to unite Emory's hospitals and clinic into one system of care. This same year, Emory doctors perform the first biventricular pacemaker implant in the state. The Emory Clinic expands by moving primary care into a new facility at 1525 Clifton Road.
1998
Wesley Woods Center is incorporated into Emory Healthcare. The Emory Children's Center is also incorporated into Emory Healthcare. The NIH designates Emory as one of three Parkinson's Disease Research Centers of Excellence. Emory doctors perform the world's first unrelated umbilical cord blood transplant for sickle cell anemia.
1999
Emory establishes EHCA LLC, a limited liability company overseen by a board jointly governed by Emory Healthcare and Columbia/HCA Healthcare Corporation (now Hospital Corporation of America). A research wing that includes the Vaccine Research Center opens at Yerkes National Primate Research Center.
2000
The Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing moves into a new 100,000 square-foot home.
2001
The Whitehead Biomedical Research Building opens with 325,000 square feet of space for interdisciplinary research programs.
2002
Expansion at Emory Crawford Long Hospital (renamed Emory University Hospital Midtown in 2009) includes a 20-story medical office tower and diagnostic and treatment center.
2003
The Emory Winship Cancer Institute moves into a new facility that supports outpatient cancer care and research. Emory opens a Faculty and Education Building at Grady Memorial Hospital. Drs. Chris Larsen and Tom Pearson perform Georgia's first islet cell transplant for diabetes.
2004
A neuroscience research nuilding is completed at Yerkes, and a new building for the Emory Children's Center opens next to the Children's Healthcare of Atlanta at Egleston on Emory's campus.
2006
The Emory Children's Center and Children's Healthcare of Atlanta formed an alliance, adding a hyphen to Emory-Children's Center's to symbolize their new integrated relationship.
2007
A medical education building opens on the Emory campus with state-of-the-art simulation suites, auditoriums, and classrooms. In suburban Atlanta, Emory Healthcare opens a new 110-bed facility, Emory Johns Creek Hospital. Emory University establishes the Global Health Institute.
2008
Part of Emory's Predictive Health Initiative, the Center for Health Discovery and Well-Being opens at the midtown campus to prevent disease before it starts. The 120-bed Emory University Orthopaedics & Spine Hospital opens in Tucker, Georgia. The Rollins School of Public Health breaks ground for a second public health building. Plans are being drawn for a new Emory Clinic building.
2009
Emory Crawford Long Hospital is renamed Emory University Hospital Midtown, to better reflect its role as a major component of Emory. Emory Winship Cancer Institute earns National Cancer Institute Cancer Center designation.
Additional Timelines on the Web
- "If These Walls Could Talk: Emory School of Medicine" (Emory Medicine, 2004)
- "Med-Morphosis: Coming of Age at the Emory Clinic" (Momentum, Spring 2003)
