Seventy years ago, Texas Children’s opened our doors with a three-story building in the Medical Center and welcomed our first patient, three-year-old Leigh Van Wagner. Fast forward to today, and because of our One Amazing Team’s dedication to our mission to create a healthier future for children and women, we’re now the largest pediatric hospital in the United States opening our new 365,000-square-foot hospital in North Austin.
As the first pediatric hospital in Texas, we offered a specialized experience for patients and families in the area. Our opening year we had 4,588 patient admissions; 5,492 visits to 11 clinics and performed approximately 92,000 lab tests. Due to our incredible growth over the next seven decades, today, we have nearly 4.9 million patient encounters and nearly 7,000 births take place annually.
Our employee numbers have skyrocketed with employees in our campus hospitals in Medical Center, West, The Woodlands and Austin, Texas Children’s Pediatrics, Urgent Cares, Texas Children’s Health Plan, The Center for Children and Women, Duncan NRI, Specialty Care locations and non-clinical areas. What started with 128 employees in 1954 has grown to more than 17,000 Texas Children’s employees today.
Congratulations to all our team members for 70 years of changing lives.
Happenings from 1954
While our hospital opening changed the landscape for pediatric medicine in Texas, many other amazing things happened around the world that year:
- A group of children from Arsenal Elementary School in Pittsburgh, Penn. receives the first injections of the new polio vaccine developed by Dr. Jonas Salk. Thanks to the vaccine, polio cases were reduced by 99 percent worldwide by the 21st century.
- Dr. Joseph E. Murray at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston, Mass. performs the first human kidney transplant between 23-year-old identical twins.
- Bell Labs announces the first solar battery made from silicon. It has about 6% efficiency.
- Brown v. Board of Education – The United States Supreme Court rules that segregated schools are unconstitutional.
- RCA manufactures first color TV set for consumers (12½” screen at $1,000).
- First Lady of the United States Mamie Eisenhower launches the first nuclear-powered submarine, the USS Nautilus, in Groton, Conn.
- English athlete Roger Bannister becomes first to run a sub-4 minute mile, recording 3:59:4 at Iffley Road Track, Oxford.
- New York Yankee Joe DiMaggio weds Marilyn Monroe at San Francisco City Hall.
- New York City Ballet co-founder and balletmaster George Balanchine’s production of The Nutcracker is staged for the first time in New York, becoming an annual tradition still being performed.
- The first issue of Sports Illustrated magazine is published.
- Texas Instruments announces the development of the first transistor radio.
- The first Hyatt Hotel, The Hyatt House Los Angeles, opens. It is the first hotel in the world built adjacent to an airport.
- The first branch of Burger King opens in Miami, Fla.