Children’s Mercy Kansas City is a freestanding children’s hospital founded in 1897 by sisters Alice Berry Graham and Katharine Berry Richardson. It ranks consistently among the nation’s top pediatric hospitals and anchors the hospital-hill neighborhood from its main Adele Hall Campus at 2401 Gillham Road.
History
The hospital traces to June 24, 1897, when Alice Berry Graham — a dentist — and her sister Katharine Berry Richardson — a physician and surgeon — opened the Free Bed Fund Association for Crippled, Deformed and Ruptured Children with a single rented bed at a women’s hospital at 15th Street and Cleveland Avenue. The sisters had encountered a crippled, malnourished child abandoned in the streets and resolved to provide care for children whose families could not pay — at a time when such charity medicine was uncommon and when women’s standing in the medical professions was still contested.
Word spread quickly. In 1901 the governing board formally adopted the name Mercy Hospital. In 1903 the hospital opened in its own building at 414 Highland Avenue with five beds, growing to 27 beds within two years. Alice Berry Graham managed administration and fundraising from the founding until 1911; she died in 1913. Katharine Berry Richardson continued at the helm and died in 1933. A cornerstone inscription at the hospital honors Alice Graham: “In 1897, Dr. Alice Berry Graham founded this hospital for sick and crippled children — to be forever nonsectarian, nonlocal, and for those who cannot pay.”
The Highland Avenue building served the hospital for roughly thirteen years. On the day before Thanksgiving 1917, patients and staff moved to a new building at Independence Avenue and Woodland, the hospital’s home for the next fifty-three years. In 1970 the institution moved again — this time to its current site on hospital-hill at 2401 Gillham Road. Expansions began almost immediately: a neonatal intensive care unit enlargement and an auditorium and chapel were added as early as 1972. The five-story Hall Family Outpatient Center — named for the hall-family-foundation — opened in 1995, followed by the seven-story Herman and Helen Sutherland Inpatient Tower in 1996. Children’s Mercy South opened in suburban Johnson County in 1997, expanded in 2004, and was renamed Children’s Mercy Kansas in 2015. In 2021 the nine-story Children’s Mercy Research Institute opened, connected directly to the Hospital Hill campus and fulfilling Katharine Richardson’s vision of integrating research with patient care.
The campus
The Adele Hall Campus at 2401 Gillham Road in the hospital-hill neighborhood is the primary facility. It houses 334 licensed beds, the region’s only Level I pediatric trauma center, and the region’s highest-level neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). The campus name honors Adele Hall, the civic-philanthropic figure associated with the hall-family-foundation and Hallmark Cards, reflecting the family’s long financial support of the institution.
The 2021 Research Institute building added approximately 375,000 square feet of dedicated clinical research space directly adjoining the main hospital, reinforcing the integration of research and bedside care that defines the institution’s current model.
Children’s Mercy operates additional campuses and specialty clinics across the Kansas City metropolitan area, including its Johnson County campus in suburban Kansas.
Specialties and research
Children’s Mercy holds affiliation with the university-of-missouri-kansas-city School of Medicine, with over 600 residents from partnering institutions and several hundred health-care students rotating through annually. The Children’s Mercy Research Institute supports more than 100 physicians and scientists engaged in active research studies.
U.S. News & World Report’s 2025–2026 “Best Children’s Hospitals” rankings placed Children’s Mercy among the nation’s top pediatric institutions, ranking in nine of eleven rated specialties and ranking first in Missouri. The hospital holds the region’s only Level I pediatric trauma designation and runs specialty programs across oncology, cardiology, nephrology, neurology, orthopedics, pulmonology, and other pediatric disciplines.
See also
hospital-hill, university-of-missouri-kansas-city, crown-center, hall-family-foundation, Wiki