Brewster Hospital's historic building now sits at 843 West Monroe Street in LaVilla, moved across the street in 2005 from its longtime address at 915 West Monroe Street. On May 13, 1976, this building was added to the U.S. National Register of Historic Places. This was Jacksonville's first Black hospital.
Founded in 1901 as the George A. Brewster Hospital and School of Nurse Training, it opened because there was no place for Black people to go for treatment after the disastrous Great Fire of 1901. Its sponsor was the Women's Division of the Methodist Board of Missions. As in other Southern cities, white hospitals did not treat Black residents before the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Brewster served African Americans here from 1901 to 1966, and it began in the West Monroe building before expanding to East Jacksonville and Springfield. Among its students was Abbie Sweetwine, the military nurse dubbed "The Angel of Platform 6," who undertook her initial nurse training here before her work during the British Harrow and Wealdstone rail crash. The hospital closed in 1966.
West Monroe stretches from here to 915, this whole block still remembering those years beside you.