the nucleus of a great institution
St. Vincent’s celebrates 90 years in Jacksonville



In December 1910, Pastor Michael Maher of Immaculate Conception Parish in Jacksonville wrote a letter to the mother superior of the Daughters of Charity in Emmitsburg, Md. “We have for a long time wished to have a hospital here in charge of Sisters and now a most favorable opportunity presents itself,” Father Maher wrote.

The DeSoto Sanitorium was a 42-bed hospital at the corner of Fifth and Boulevard Streets in Jacksonville’s Springfield district, one of two facilities existing in the city at that time. In his letter, Father Maher wrote “under lay supervision it has not turn out satisfactory, and [the principal doctors] are anxious now to turn it over to the Sisters.”

At the request of Bishop Michael J. Curley of the Diocese of Saint Augustine, as well as several businessmen, physicians and clergy, the first Daughters of Charity arrived in Jacksonville to manage the hospital in 1916.

Under new ownership, the hospital flourished. In 1919, St. Vincent’s School of Nursing opened, and plans were made to build a larger hospital on the west bank of the St. Johns River in Riverside. St. Vincent’s Hospital, a new 200-bed facility built at a cost of $1 million, opened in 1928. After World War II construction of a west wing increased the number of beds to 365.

As the city and county governments of Jacksonville merged into a consolidated government in 1968, St. Vincent’s followed suit with its own modernization in 1972 and renamed the hospital, St. Vincent’s Medical Center. More expansion followed – the nursing school closed, the Dillon and DePaul Professional Buildings opened. St. Vincent’s bought Riverside Hospital in 1991 and built St. Catherine Labouré Manor in 1992.

In 1995 St. Vincent’s joined Baptist Health System to become Baptist-St. Vincent’s Health Systems, a partnership that ended in 2000. St. Vincent’s Medical Center was named among the top 100 medical centers in the United States from 1994 to 1996. In 1999 it was named one of the top 100 cardiovascular hospitals by the HCIA.

Daughter of Charity DeSales Wisniewski, vice president of Mission Integration, has worked at St. Vincent’s for nearly 20 years. She says the role of her order and the mission statement of St. Vincent’s has been to provide health care for the poor of the community. In a commitment to that tradition, the hospital employs several mobile health units that service the area’s poor as well as the migrant farm workers that toil in the rural areas south of the city.

Sister DeSales is one of five Daughters of Charity still active at the hospital; they work in pastoral care, administration and auxiliary services.

“I’m grateful to have had the opportunity to work, and to pray with our associates, care for the sick and the poor,” Sister DeSales said.

St. Luke’s Hospital, founded in 1873 as the first private hospital in Florida, was purchased by St. Vincent’s last year and will assume operations of the 283-bed facility in 2008.

“There is no Catholic hospital in Florida, and if we can get the present buildings it will be the nucleus of a great institution,” wrote Father Maher back in 1910. “I think readily and advantageously to develop it into an institution which will be the means of advancing the church’s interest and influence here, of doing untold good for humanity, and for saving many a soul.”

Mission accomplished.