Mobile Medical Museum

09/17/2026

NEW EXHIBITION ON THE HISTORY OF USA Health University Hospital TO OPEN IN NOVEMBER

For Immediate Release
September 16, 2026
Contact: Daryn P. Glassbrook, Ph.D., Executive Director
(251) 415-1109
[email protected]

Mobile, Alabama – On November 7, 2026, the Mobile Medical Museum will open a new exhibition, King > City > University: A Hospital Older than America, exploring the story of USA Health University Hospital, which can trace its lineage back to a French hospital founded in 1711, making it the oldest operating hospital system in the United States.

The exhibition will outline University Hospital’s many changes of location and administration and present its significant role in the yellow fever epidemics, the Civil War, and the Jim Crow era. Additionally, it will highlight the hospital’s role in supporting medical and nursing education as a clinical training site, from the time of the Medical College of Alabama and the City Hospital Nursing School through its current service to University of South Alabama students and faculty.

A highlight of the exhibition will be a 1964 documentary, The Shame and the Hope, produced by WKRG-TV to gain support for public financing of the hospital’s move to its current location on University Hospital Drive. It shows rarely seen, black and white footage of hospital wards, ambulance runs, and healthcare procedures of the period.

“University Hospital has been serving Mobile through thick and thin since the city’s inception,” said Mobile Medical Museum Executive Director Daryn Glassbrook. “While it has come far from its roots as a Catholic charity hospital, it has remained deeply intertwined with the city’s culture, geography, and economy. Its 300-year history contains many moving and surprising revelations, which we are eager to share with our visitors.”

The exhibition will be on display in the Museum’s Mary Elizabeth and Charles Bernard Rodning Gallery through May 2027. The November 7 opening reception is from 1 to 3 pm and is free for Mobile Medical Museum members and anyone with a USA employee or student ID. Non-members will be charged standard admission fees.

“University Hospital is much more than a building or a place where people receive care. It is part of the fabric of Mobile,” said Josh Snow, MSHA, market CEO for USA Health’s University Hospital and Providence Hospital. “Generations of patients, families, nurses, physicians, students, and caregivers have passed through its doors, each leaving a part of their story behind. We’re honored to see that remarkable history brought to life through this exhibition, and grateful to the Mobile Medical Museum for helping our community remember and celebrate the people and moments that have shaped University Hospital.”

Support for the exhibition is provided by USA Health. Additional support is provided by Mobile County Commission and Dr. Charles B. Rodning.

For more information, please contact Daryn Glassbrook at (251) 415-1109 or [email protected].

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The Mobile Medical Museum is a proud recipient of a Spark Good local grant from Walmart store 5740 in Mobile. Thanks so much for supporting health education for students and healthcare professionals of all ages!

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Superficial branches of the facial and the fifth cranial nerve. An illustration by Ludwik Maurycy Hirschfeld (1814-1876). Hirschfeld was a Polish-French anatomist whose 1853 neuroanatomical atlas is considered one of the most comprehensive and accurate of its time. Reprinted from A Text-Book of Human Physiology, by Austin Flint, M.D., L.L.D. 4th ed. (New York: D. Appleton and Company), 1897.

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A staff member created an exhibit for her grandfather, who had polio.