Cannon Street Hospital

Front inscription

Cannon Street Hospital, established here in 1897, served the African-American community of Charleston until 1959. Officially the Hospital and Training School for Nurses, it occupied a three-story brick building constructed ca. 1800. Dr. Alonzo C. McClennan (1855-1912), then one of only six black physicians in Charleston, was one of its founders and also edited The Hospital Herald 1898-1900.

McClennan-Banks Memorial Hospital

By 1956 Dr. Thomas C. McFall, director of the Cannon Street Hospital, led a campaign to build a new hospital. McClennan-Banks Memorial Hospital, which opened on Courtenay Street in 1959, was named for Dr. McClennan and Anna DeCosta Banks (1869-1930), first head nurse of the Cannon Street Hospital. The old hospital here was torn down in 1961; the new hospital closed at the end of 1976 and was torn down in 2004.