Some places disappear so completely that if nobody told you they were ever there, you’d never know.
That’s the case with the Babies Hospital.
Most North Carolinians have never heard of it, but for nearly sixty years, one of the most remarkable hospitals in our state sat on the sound just before you crossed the bridge to Wrightsville Beach. From 1920 until 1930, it was the only hospital in North Carolina devoted entirely to the care of young’uns.
It all started with Dr. J. Buren Sidbury, an Onslow County native and one of the first pediatricians in the state. He believed something that sounds a little unusual today—that the salt air and ocean breezes could help sick children heal.
As strange as that may sound now, a hundred years ago it was considered progressive medicine. Similar hospitals already dotted the East Coast, and Sidbury wanted North Carolina’s babies to have access to that same kind of groundbreaking care.
So, on June 6, 1920, the Babies Hospital opened its doors overlooking the waterway across from Wrightsville Beach.
The first building was a simple wooden cottage. It burned to the ground in 1927, but by the grace of God, no one was hurt. In its place rose a fireproof Mediterranean-style hospital with twenty-two rooms, a children’s ward, and one feature I can’t help but smile at—a rooftop garden where babies could safely soak up sunshine and salty breezes behind protective walls.
For years, the hospital only opened during the summer, when the sea air was believed to work its best. By 1939, it had grown into a year-round facility, and in 1942 it began training pediatric nurses from across the Carolinas.
That’s where this story becomes personal.
My grandma worked there as a nurse.
I don’t know exactly when she started or when she left, but I know she was there in 1959 because Mama still has Grandma’s W-2 tucked away in one of her keepsake boxes. I’ve held it in my own hands more than once.
Her wages for an entire year?
Twelve hundred dollars.
The first time I saw that W-2, I thought there had to be a mistake. Today you couldn’t hardly live a month on that, much less a year. But Grandma wasn’t there because nursing was going to make her rich. She showed up every day to rock babies, comfort worried parents, and care for children who weren’t her own. Somewhere along the way, she became part of a place that found its way into the hearts of thousands of North Carolina families.
Mama never let me forget it.
Every time we’d drive toward Wrightsville Beach, she’d point out the window and say, “Your grandma worked at the Baby Hospital.”
It didn’t matter that she’d already told me a hundred times. She’d say it again with the same pride every single trip.
Back then, I’d absently smile and nod.
Now I’d give just about anything to hear her point it out one more time.
For fifty-eight years, Babies Hospital cared for children from across North Carolina without accepting public funding. Families came from every corner of the state—and sometimes from neighboring states too—hoping the little hospital by the water could help their child heal. Generations of doctors, nurses, parents, and children passed through its doors, each carrying away a story of their own.
By the late 1970s, medicine had changed. Advances in pediatric care meant hospitals no longer relied on sea air as part of treatment, and in 1978 Babies Hospital quietly closed its doors for good.
The building remained beside the Wrightsville Beach bridge for another twenty-five years, becoming a familiar landmark for anyone making the drive to the coast. When demolition was proposed, locals fought to save it. They weren’t just trying to preserve an old building. They were trying to hold on to a piece of Wilmington’s memory.
The wrecking crews came anyway in 2003.
Its loss was felt all over Wilmington. It seems like everybody had some connection to the Babies Hospital—a grandmother who nursed there, a daddy who was born there, a cousin who spent a summer recovering in that rooftop garden.
Ours was Grandma.
And that little W-2 tucked away in Mama’s keepsake box.
If the hospital were still standing today, it would be celebrating its 106th anniversary this summer.
The building is gone, but for a whole lot of New Hanover County families, the Babies Hospital hasn’t really disappeared.
It’s just moved.
Out of the landscape and into memory, where it still sits quietly on the sound, waiting for somebody to drive by, point out the window, and say, “Something important used to be right there.”
