Celebrating
F
or 85 years, BryanLGH has been at the forefront of advancing health care. It all began early in the 20th Century because of the generosity and vision of leaders in our community. Famed orator, Congressman and Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan and Mary Baird Bryan donated their Fairview home and surrounding farmland in 1922 to become the site of a new hospital at 48th and Sumner Streets. Bryan Memorial Hospital opened June 6, 1926, and the first classes at Bryan School of Nursing started that fall. Plans also were under way to create a general city hospital. Thanks to several years of local fundraising efforts and a $100,000 contribution from the estate of Robert E. Moore, Lincoln General Hospital opened in 1925 on South 17th Street. Donations from the John L. Teeters trust fund and the Moore estate helped establish a nursing school. Both hospitals eventually outgrew their original buildings, as health care and patients’ needs changed; and both hospitals met their respective challenges. Here are a few of the many highlights, as Bryan and Lincoln General merged into a leading health system — BryanLGH.
85 years 1922: Statesman William Jennings Bryan donates his Fairview home and surrounding farmland to become the site of a new hospital. It opens in 1926 and is named Bryan Memorial Hospital in honor of its first benefactor, who died in 1925.
1926: Fairview houses student nurses for decades; the first class graduates in 1929. 1939: Lincoln General first general hospital in America to provide acute adult psychiatric inpatient services.
1920
1930
1940
1930: First major expansion project at Bryan.
1950 1948: Second major construction project at Bryan.
1930s: Refinements in medical diagnoses and treatments lead to improved outcomes for patients. 1933: Lincoln General cancer clinic installs world’s most powerful X-ray generating apparatus, using funds from the John L. Teeters trust. 1920s: Lincoln Rotary Club conceives the idea of Lincoln General Hospital and leads a public campaign to raise $100,000 that matches City of Lincoln funds and a donation from the Robert E. Moore estate. New hospital opens in 1925.
14 Spring 2011