City: Indianapolis, IN

Category: Health Care

Telephone: (317) 338-7000

Address: 2001 W. 86th St.

Description: In 1878, Bishop Francis Silas Chatard—a physician before he was ordained—sought to establish a Catholic hospital in Indiana to be operated by the Daughters of Charity. Located in an unused seminary building next to St. Joseph’s Church on East Vermont Street in Indianapolis, the facility was ready for the first four Daughters of Charity who arrived on April 26, 1881. They had only $34.77 among them. The bishop gave them $50 more to begin their mission of converting the abandoned mission into a hospital. Just eight years after their arrival, the sisters moved to a second home, where the mission remained for two decades. With its legal name of St. Vincent Hospital, the facility moved again to a new 250-bed hospital in 1913. Another move and expansion came in 1974 through a massive community effort.