Claxton-hepburn Archives

Claxton-hepburn Medical Center (Images of America) Claxton-hepburn Archives

The first hospital in St. Lawrence County, Claxton-Hepburn Medical Center opened in 1885 as the Ogdensburg City Hospital and Orphan Asylum. Although always a community-owned organization, it was managed by the Grey Nuns, Sisters of Charity, until 1976. The hospital's name changed twice: first in 1918 to A. Barton Hepburn Hospital to honor the local banker and donor, and again in 2000 to Claxton-Hepburn Medical Center in recognition of an exceptional gift from its own Dr. E. Garfield Claxton. The hospital was the home of a nursing school, with its first graduating class in 1905 and its last in 1968. With an innovative group of caregivers and community members, Claxton-Hepburn was the first to bring many new services to the region, including an artificial kidney machine in the late 1960s, long before many urban hospitals had one. In the 1990s and 2000s, the county's first dialysis center and comprehensive cancer center were constructed. Today, Claxton-Hepburn serves as a regional referral center for dialysis, radiation and medical oncology, psychiatry, and wound healing.