The Pennsylvania Hospital is significant for its status as the nation’s first hospital. In continuous use for more than 260 years, the Hospital has been the site of innovations in clinical care, public health, medical research, education, and mental health treatment.
Stewardship Guidelines
Founded in an era of American Enlightenment ideals, the Hospital evolved within a network of formative Philadelphia civic institutions and emerging disciplines. As such, the Hospital’s history and relevance extends far beyond its own walls and founding figures.
Overarching stewardship goals at the Hospital include:
Preserving the integral relationship between the Hospital as a functioning patient care institution and as an important cultural-historical institution.
Shifting to a care cycle that is based on preventive conservation and cyclical maintenance。
Developing institutional and educational partnerships.
Extending beyond institutional associations and narratives about Pennsylvania Hospital’s famous founders to explore more expansive and inclusive contexts.
Recognizing the Pine Building and historic collections as more than just an asset to the Hospital and understanding that they present an enormous opportunity to explore histories of medicine, institutionalization, patient care, and Philadelphia.
Developing the Hospital’s ability to support scholarship and research by broadening access to the collections, hosting researchers through residencies, and using digital technologies to share primary source material, exhibitions, and interpretive projects.
General Policies
The purpose of the conservation policies is to provide a framework for decision making about the future use, care, conservation, presentation and interpretation of the Hospital.
Policy 1: Adoption of the CMP
Adoption of the CMP signifies a commitment to the conservation values and philosophies outlined; it should be used as a starting point for any future intervention and planning.
Policy 2: Review of the CMP and Policies
Monitoring of the CMP implementation may be done internally or by a preservation specialist whenever necessary. It should be reviewed and updated on a regular basis (about every 5 years) to ensure that it remains up-to-date, relevant, and accurate.
Policy 3: Dissemination of the CMP
The CMP should be shared with anyone with an interest in the site and its conservation.
Policy 4: Significance Guides Conservation and Planning
Conservation and planning should always be significance-driven, which means it should respond to the significance embodied by the site and the values held by its users.
Policy 5: Professional Conservation Advice
Always consult experienced conservation professionals and practitioners on the development of proposals for the site.
Policy 6: Best Practice Conservation Principles
Any future conservation management and interpretation of the Pennsylvania Hospital must be carried out in accordance with best practice conservation on principles as outlined in the Burra Charter and Secretary of Interior’s Standards.
Policy 7: Coordinated Approach to Conservation
Approach conservation planning in a methodical and strategic manner that recognizes needs and priorities across the campus, with a focus on maximizing available resources and prioritizing preventive action.
Policy 8: Recording and Documentation
A database of records of conservation work undertaken in the past should be kept and continually updated with the conclusion of projects.
Documentation for all future work should include a description of treatment, before and after documentation, and should be compiled into a comprehensive final submission.
Appropriate guiding documents should be prepared or compiled prior to initiating any work that will substantially alter or modify parts of the historic built campus.
Use and Management Policies
Policy 9: Compatibility of Uses
New development should be relegated to the north half of the site. Per the pattern of historic use, the north half of the site has traditionally been allocated to innovation and modernization, while the southern half has been dedicated to the preservation of the Hospital’s historic and iconic identity.
Policy 10: Define Heritage Management Structure
As the organizational structure has shifted over the past decade, it may be beneficial to re-evaluate how the heritage aspect of the site is managed.
Policy 11: Improve Site Security
Improving site security, particularly in specific parts of the Pine Building, will ensure that staff, visitors, and the collections remain safe.
Policy 12: Develop & Implement an Interpretation Plan
An Interpretation Plan will help identify interpretive strategies at the Hospital and outline new ideas and methods for educating visitors about the site.
Policy 13: Develop & Implement a Visitor Management Plan
Developing a Visitor Management Plan by building on existing protocols and practices will help address issues arising from any tensions around use of the Pine Building as a functioning office environment and a destination for public visitors.
Programming, Interpretation, & Visitation Policies
Policy 14: Update interpretive displays throughout
A number of interpretive displays are present throughout the Pine Building and grounds, some of which date as far back as the 1980s. This presents an opportunity to initiate a series of updates, bring more contemporary and relevant interpretation into the modern hospital, and incorporate new themes and objectives into the interpretive strategy.
Policy 15: Seek out collaborations and partnerships with related institutions.
The Hospital has collaborated in the past, reviving these partnerships would strengthen the Hospital’s position in the network of Philadelphia historical, cultural, and research institutions which in turn would provide much needed public promotion.
Policy 16: Refine tour circuit, content, and training
Refine existing tours and expand tour options.
Policy 17: Reinstate more regular public programming
Doing so will reinitiate public engagement, re-establish connections to the scholarly and medical professional community, raise the public profile of the Hospital thereby building a broader constituency, and importantly, will make effective use of the Hospital’s many heritage, spatial, and place-based values.
Policy 18: Update interpretation of key spaces
Expand on and enhance current interpretive narratives about the Hospital and its spaces. Anchor the interpretations in the existing fabric, spaces, landscape and collections of the site.