When I arrived at the campus, I had to stop at a security checkpoint, and after explaining why I was there, I was told I was out of luck because the school was closed. I was asked to leave.
So I moved on to plans B and C. Plan B was to do a walk-around in Oakwood Cemetery next door (see yesterday’s post), and Plan C was to make of photographs of the structure you see in the lead-off photo.
The structure is the former St. Agnes Hospital, which technically is on the grounds of the St. Augustine’s campus, but it stands separately on modest acreage between the closed university and the cemetery.
I didn’t look up any of these landmarks before I drove out there; the trip was spur of the moment. So I didn’t know what I would be dealing with when I got there. (I don’t recommend this for photography enthusiasts; you should know what to expect if you invest time and travel to do a shoot of this sort).
The hospital ruins certainly surprised me; when I got home afterward and looked up its history, I was saddened, partly because of what has become of this historic facility, and partly — maybe even mostly — because of the city of Raleigh’s protracted indecision about what to do with it, if anything.
St. Agnes was open for about 65 years, from 1896 to 1961, and it served as a hospital and a training center for physicians and nurse for African Americans. It initially operated out of a former college president’s residence on the school campus and didn’t move into this then-new building until 1909. Nurses took chemistry, sociology and psychology classes at St. Augustine’s College (the name it went by back then) as well as the regular nursing curriculum as part of their training.
In short order, the two other hospitals in the city that would treat African Americans — Rex Hospital and Shaw University’s Leonard Hospital — closed, leaving St. Agnes the only option for the community’s black residents.
St. Agnes struggled financially during almost its entire period of operation although various — and multiple — fund-raising campaigns helped sustain it through the years, including a particularly difficult period during the Great Depression.
But the building eventually fell into disrepair, was condemned in 1955 and was closed six years later after Wake County opened its first public hospital, which treated patients of all races.
In 1979, the city declared the building a historic landmark, which helps explain why it remains standing today. And it does so with the help of several steel support beams (the long orange-colored slabs of metal you see in the pictures).
Upon its closing, the land and buildings were transferred to St. Augustine’s, which used one of the buildings for housing of female students. In the interim, various plans and ideas for the site’s future have been discussed, to no avail.
In the most recent development, a feasibility study was funded in 2022 to determine whether the ruins could be preserved or renovated. Nothing has come out of that that I know of.
One thing I thought of was to make the building a museum for Raleigh area African American physicians, nurses, and their medical training and education. Perhaps students, alumni and/or faculty at St. Augustine’s as well as Shaw University and North Carolina Central University in Durham, two other HBCUs in the Raleigh-Durham Triangle, might be interested in participating or leading the way.
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