History of Rush University -Dave Barnett, 2007 (Approved by the Rush Archives)
History of Rush University Rush University Medical Center (RUMC) is an academic medical center that encompasses a 613-bed hospital serving adults and children, the 61-bed Johnston R. Bowman Health Center, as well as Rush University. Unlike most academic medical centers, RUMC owns the university rather than the hospital being owned and operated by the university. With our teacher-practitioner faculty model, this approach allows students to be educated in an environment which thoroughly grounds them in both the academic and clinical aspects of their respective professions. Founded in 1972, the University has expanded from one college and fewer than 100 students to four colleges and over 1,300 students. It now includes Rush Medical College, the College of Nursing, the College of Health Sciences, and the Graduate College. The Armour Academic Center building was opened in 1976 and became the location for laboratories, lecture hall, the library, the learning resource center (media library, academic computing, and classrooms. This building today now also houses student services, college offices, and study rooms. In 2003, the Medical Center officially changed its name to Rush University Medical Center (from RushPresbyterian-St. Luke’s Medical Center) to reflect the important role education and research play in its patient care mission. The history of the university extends much further back, however, to the founding of elements of the colleges of medicine and nursing. The Colleges: Rush Medical College is named for Benjamin Rush, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, who was a physician from Pennsylvania. He became a medical and humanitarian leader after the Revolutionary War. George Washington was one of his patients. Dr. Rush pioneered advances in psychiatry and published papers and books about alcoholism. Daniel Brainard, M.D., a New York native educated in Philadelphia, founded Rush not long after his arrival in the village of Chicago. Rush Medical College, like its city, gained its charter the first week of March 1837. It opened officially on December 4, 1843, with 22 students enrolled in a 16-week course.
Daniel Brainard 1812-1866 (Photo: 1847)
Following the 1871 Great Chicago Fire, Rush abandoned its destroyed campus and built anew in the west side neighborhood it occupies today. In the manner of most medical schools in the 1800s, Rush was a
proprietary institution owned and operated by a group of physicians who had joined Dr. Brainard in establishing practices in young Chicago. Presbyterian Hospital, Rush’s teaching hospital, opened in 1884. Within fifteen years, it became the important teaching hospital the faculty had envisioned when they convinced the Chicago leaders of that religious group to organize that facility.
Photograph Collection; Rush University Medical Center Archives, Chicago, IL (RUMC Archives).
1