The IWK is the largest facility in Atlantic Canada caring for children, youth and adolescents, and is the only Level 1 pediatric trauma centre east of Quebec.

IWK Health also manages more than twenty remote site locations distributed throughout the Halifax region and Nova Scotia.

Construction of the new Izaak Walton Killam Hospital for Children (informally nicknamed the IWK) began in 1967 and the $20 million 325-bed facility opened in 1970.

In 1975 the Halifax Infirmary announced that it would no longer handle maternity cases, forcing the Grace to absorb its patients.

By the 1970s the Grace occupied half a city block with 126 adult beds and 166 bassinets with 40 in the neo-natal intensive care unit (NICU).

[5] According to the Halifax Mail Star of May 28, 1970, the children's hospital financed by the Killam Estate opened, despite the failed condition that the South Street Poor House be eliminated.

[clarification needed] Today, this hospital is gone, torn down after only 40 years for a much larger provincially funded building set much further back on the former Poor House property.

The new 475,000 sq ft (44,100 m2) building was connected to the IWK to provide access to that facility's pediatric medicine departments.

It was designed by Nycum Fowler Group and DuBois Plumb Partnership and won the 1994 Lieutenant Governor's Award for Architecture.

In 2000 a helipad (TC LID: CIW2) was constructed on the southwest corner of the former Grace Maternity Hospital building; this proposal caused some concern in the adjacent residential area on the west side of Robie Street.

[9] In 2001 the Salvation Army ended its involvement with the amalgamated institution and the name was simplified to become the IWK Health Centre which remains in current use as of 2013.

The most prominent exterior change to the facility was the addition of a parking garage accessed from University Avenue as well as an atrium connected to the Link Building.

On June 24, 2013, philanthropist Marjorie Lindsay announced she would be donating $1 million to help fund the construction of a new inpatient mental health unit due to open in 2014.