One of the nation’s oldest hospitals will now be one of Philadelphia’s newest museums

Before 1751, sick Pennsylvanians had few healthcare options other than often expensive home visits from doctors. That changed when Benjamin Franklin and physician Thomas Bond established a medical institution to treat the physically and mentally ill for free.

The result was the Pennsylvania Hospital on Spruce Street. The 275-year-old institution became home to the country’s first surgical amphitheater to teach students, the oldest medical library, and a nursing museum, among other historic firsts. It continues to advance medical research as part of Penn Medicine.

Now the nation’s oldest chartered hospital will become Philadelphia’s newest museum.

The hospital’s Pine Building, which started construction in 1755, will be converted to the Pennsylvania Hospital Museum, Penn announced on Monday. The museum in the majestic Georgian architecture building at Eighth and Pine Streets, designed by architect Samuel Rhoads, is scheduled to open to the public on May 8.

“It’s a very Philadelphia story to hear the history of the hospital because it really is about caring for other people,” said Stacey Peeples, lead archivist at Pennsylvania Hospital.

The medical library, surgical amphitheater, and apothecary have all been restored for the museum. Eight galleries will feature videos, hands-on activities, and archival objects describing the history of the hospital and the care it delivered.

The opening of the museum in the hospital’s 275th year coincides with America’s Semiquincentennial celebrations. (The University of Pennsylvania Health System, which merged with the hospital in October 1997, will run the museum.)

One of Peeples’ favorite items on display is a collection of medical cases compiled by the hospital’s doctors in the early 19th century.

Housed in the historic library, the book is flipped to a page showing a man with a seven-pound tumor in his cheek and neck area. Visitors can also find the actual preserved tumor from 1805 on display in the back of the room.

Pennsylvania Hospital’s apothecary — where medicines were mixed and sold — was last used for that purpose in the early 1900s.

Most recently, it served as a conference room.

It’ll now be restored to its original layout, based on historic images from the 19th century. That includes bringing back alcoves filled with shelves of bottles, the scale used to weigh ingredients, as well as a giant counter where the apothecary could mix medications, Peeples said.

In the historic library, the only room ready for news media to view this week, the artifacts remained scattered around.

A tonsil guillotine, designed to remove tonsils using a blade, sat next to early surgical tools and stethoscopes. Some objects, such as the scalpel, have not changed significantly in form through the years.

“But how we treat those objects certainly is very, very different. We want to make sure everything’s sanitized now,” Peeples said.

Other artifacts included old tools of medical education. Like three anatomical casts of women who died during childbirth in the mid-1700s that were used for anatomical study in lieu of cadavers.

The museum’s exhibits will showcase the hospital’s history of delivering care related to behavioral health and women’s health, as well as its role treating patients during times of conflicts, beginning with the Seven Years’ War, and through pandemics.

“People would always talk about us being able to do something on a larger scale like this, and I honestly wasn’t sure that was ever going to happen,” said Peeples, who has been at the hospital for 25 years.

Tickets will go on sale at the end of the month and cost $12 per person, with discounts for those 12 and under, 65 and over, and the military.

The plan is for the museum to be a permanent fixture, open Wednesdays to Sundays. The rest of the hospital will keep operating as normal.

The hospital, older than the nation, houses 517 licensed inpatient beds, and saw 19,759 adult admissions, 54,023 emergency department visits, and 5,163 births in fiscal year 2025, per Penn Medicine’s statement.

“Pennsylvania Hospital is a jewel in the crown that is Penn Medicine, where our staff draw energy from our rich history to shape the future of medicine,” Alicia Gresham, CEO of Pennsylvania Hospital, said in a statement.