William H. Welch House - our neighbor at 935 St. Paul Street

Learn about a former Mt. Vernon resident and the Founding Professor of the Johns Hopkins Hospital, William H. Welch.

In the late 1800s and early 1900s, many nationally and internationally recognized men and women resided within an easy walk of where St. Paul at Chase is located today. One such man, William H. Welch, the first of the "Big Four" founding professors at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, who played a significant role in assembling Johns Hopkins' original medical school's facility and founded the nation's first school of public health at Hopkins, resided for approximately seventeen years (1891-1908) at 935 St. Paul Street, a short block's walk to our South. His three-story rowhouse at that location is identifiable today as a National Historic Landmark. His final home, a short distance away at 807 St. Paul Street, was not preserved.

“ Medical education is not completed at the medical school, it is only begun ” - William H. Welch

A cultured man known to enjoy a fine meal, and also reputed to frequently stay up late at night--sometimes missing his own lectures to his research students--Welch would no doubt have appreciated the epicureal and cultural variety, and exuberant nightlife, available in our current Mt. Vernon neighborhood. A pathologist and bacteriologist as well as a physician, Welch made some significant research contributions, and trained some of the most preeminent scientists of his time. Welch also served as a reformer of medical education in the US, and as president of many significant scientific and medical associations and institutions, including the National Academy of Sciences, the Association of American Physicians, and the Maryland State Board of Health. During WWI, he also served in the U.S. Army Medical Corps, attaining the rank of brigadier general and earning the Distinguished Service Medal.

Many more interesting details about Welch's significant contributions to the field of medical research and education, can be found HERE on Johns Hopkins' website.