Books and Manuscripts

[Preston Retreat, The]
Group of Two Fire Association of Philadelphia Documents
Philadelphia, 1839-77. Two partially-printed documents, signed in various manuscript on verso, being Fire Association of Philadelphia policies (Nos. 6361 and 76328) in the amounts of $10,000 and $5,000, for The Preston Retreat; signed on verso by the attorneys of financiers Alexander and Francis Baring, William Bingham, etc.; blindstamp of The Preston Retreat in top left of top document. Creasing from old folds. Each document in single mat and unexamined out of frame, 25 x 18 3/4 in. (635 x 476 mm). 

The Preston Retreat was a pioneering maternity hospital in Philadelphia that operated from the second half of the 19th century well into the 20th. Established in 1836, the idea of the hospital grew out of the vision of John Preston, a Philadelphia shipping tycoon and obstetrician, who served at various times in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives and Senate, on Philadelphia's City Council, and as a director of the Bank of Pennsylvania and the Schuylkill Navigation Company. When Preston died in 1835 he bequeathed upwards of $400,000 for the creation of a hospital for “married women of good character, and in indigent circumstances”. The hospital was designed by architect Thomas Ustick Walter (designer of the U.S. Capitol dome) and was built over a period of three years beginning in 1837, at 21st and Hamilton Streets. Due to funding issues it remained unopened until 1865, during the interim it served as a foster home. Upon its opening it remained in operation for nearly 100 years, expanding in the early 1900s, and was then absorbed into the Pennsylvania Hospital system in the early 1960s. It was demolished in 1963.