Birmingham's St. Vincent's Hospital on Postcards

In 2014 I posted an item about a photograph of St. Vincent's Hospital that appeared in a 1908 book Views of Birmingham. That photograph turned up on the second postcard included here. I thought I would discuss it and two others postcards of the hospital from my collection in this piece.St. Vincent's, now a part of the UAB Health System, was founded in 1898 and occupied the building shown here in 1900. Within a few years the facility had begun serving over 1000 patients annually, paying and charity, white and African-Americans. Expansion began in the 1940s and continued in the 1970s and 1980s to produce the large hospital that exists today. You can see a 2008 photo here. More information about the hospital's beginnings can be found in Howard Holley's History of Medicine in Alabama (1982). An extensive history is Tom Wofford's The St. Vincent's Story: A Century of Caring 1898-1998 (1998). Some commentary is below the images. This card appears on the cover of the Wofford book mentioned…