Talk:Pennsylvania Hospital

First Hospital?
It appears that both Bellevue and New York Hospital have prior claims to being the oldest and still-functioning hospitals in the U.S. Older, but now non-existent, hospitals were, of course, established in the 17th century. However, if anyone wants to claim "oldest" status for any hospital, then documentation and references must be provided.68.72.105.252 23:25, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Bellevue was established in 1736. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.251.40.254 (talk) 20:45, 17 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Bellevue's institutional ancestor, the city almshouse, was founded in 1736 but it may not have been a hospital per se. So Philadelphia's claim may be narrowly true depending on how you want to define a hospital, or institutional continuity. Bellevue Hospital wasn't so named until 1824. (see ). Qzd (talk) 22:00, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

An edit in January of 2017 modified the opening paragraph to identify Pennsylvania Hospital as the "2nd oldest hospital" and went on to give the founding date of Bellevue. Issues of priority are complicated, as the above comments observe, but this version struck me as awkward and unspecific. I have edited the opening paragraph to use the exact language provided by the 1974 form nominating Pennsylvania Hospital to the National Register of Historic Places. Specifically, that Pennsylvania Hospital is the "earliest established public hospital in the United States", and provided the citation to the NRHP asset to support this statement. This nominating document specifically addresses the status of Pennsylvania General and Bellevue, both of which began as institutions focused upon the poor, and not explicitly as hospitals. I have removed the text regarding Bellevue, which seems more appropriate to the wiki page concerning that institution. Gkaguirre (talk) 13:42, 10 June 2017 (UTC)

WikiProject class rating
This article was automatically assessed because at least one WikiProject had rated the article as start, and the rating on other projects was brought up to start class. BetacommandBot 03:39, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

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Oldest?
A reader wrote to Wikimedia observing a potential problem in three articles ticket:2018071610001155

If you look at Bellevue Hospital, you will see:

Bellevue Hospital, founded on March 31, 1736, is the oldest public hospital in the United States.

If you look at Pennsylvania Hospital, you will see:

Founded on May 11, 1751, by Benjamin Franklin and Dr. Thomas Bond, Pennsylvania Hospital is the earliest established public hospital in the United States.

If you look at List of the oldest hospitals in the United States, and glance down at John H. Stroger Jr. Hospital of Cook County you will see:

Nation's oldest public hospital 

The first and third seem to be identically worded. The second uses "earliest", rather than "oldest", but I have not grasped how that would make a difference.

(I now see that this has been partially addressed in a post above but as I have already drop this note on the other two talk pages on going to drop this here and hope someone can sort out all three claims.)-- S Philbrick (Talk)  01:24, 1 August 2018 (UTC)