Rush Medical College Leaves River North after Great Chicago Fire
North Side
Chicago's first medical school, Rush Medical College, opened its first permanent structure in 1844, at Grand Avenue and Indiana Street (now Dearborn Avenue) in what is now the River North neighborhood.
When the Great Chicago Fire broke out on a Sunday evening, October 8, 1871, Rush Medical College students had just completed their first week of courses that Friday. Rush's building was destroyed completely during the disaster. Some Rush students fled the city with only the shirts on their backs, losing everything they had brought with them to start their school year. Lectures resumed that Friday in Cook County Hospital, but only forty students out of about two hundred managed to attend. Eventually, one hundred more students were able to return, though almost a quarter of the class never came back after experiencing such devastating loss. Medical colleges in other states telegraphed, offering their support for any Rush students, stating they would be "received gratuitously."
After the Fire, Rush Medical College relocated to the West Side of Chicago to be near Cook County Hospital, which had just moved to Harrison and Wood Streets. Rush opened a new building on the northeast corner of that intersection in 1875, where today's Rush University Medical Center campus still stands. The West Side's Illinois Medical District grew out of this community of neighboring universities, hospitals, and other health care institutions, making it the largest urban medical district in the United States.
In 2016, Rush opened a new health center at Grand and Dearborn, Rush River North, which brings a Rush presence back to its original location in Chicago.
