Atlanta’s first medical college was established in the decade after the city was named and the decade before the Civil War. The college was a precursor to the Emory University School of Medicine – one of the foremost private facilities for medical education in the Southeast. The school is located on the Emory campus in Atlanta’s historic Druid Hills area and in Emory medical facilities downtown. The forerunner of the school dates from 1854, when the Georgia General Assembly granted a charter for Atlanta Medical College. Students attended the first session the following year, and in 1859, with a $15,000 appropriation from the state legislature, the first building was erected at Butler and Armstrong streets near the site now occupied by Grady Memorial Hospital. A series of mergers followed. In 1898, Atlanta Medical College joined with the Southern Medical College (founded in 1878) to form the Atlanta College of Physicians and Surgeons. Fifteen years later, this college merged with Atlanta School of Medicine (founded in 1905) under the historic name Atlanta Medical College. Then in 1915, the amalgamated school became Emory University School of Medicine. At a meeting of university alumni in 1919, it was decided that graduates of the antecedent institutions would become alumni of Emory University School of Medicine.
