Dr. Hunter Holmes McGuire established the St. Luke's Home for the Sick as a private surgical hospital in 1882. The original hospital, located at Governor and Ross Streets, could accommodate as many as 48 patients. Surgery was performed in patient rooms on a portable table. McGuire's skill and reputation as a surgeon attracted many patients to the fledgling hospital including some from outside Virginia. Four years after it opened, McGuire organized a training school for nurses, the first of its kind in Virginia. The hospital outgrew its converted home and moved to the corner of Grace and Harrison Streets by 1899. For more than forty years it was administered by the McGuire family. Extendicare, later Humana, Inc., purchased St. Luke's Hospital in 1971 ending almost ninety years of private control of this Richmond medical institution.