It is most well known for being the hospital where Martin Luther King Jr. died at 7:05 p.m. on Thursday, April 4, 1968, an hour after he was shot at Lorraine Motel.

[1] Erected in 1885 and operated by the Sisters of St. Francis,[2] St. Joseph's later became a Medical Center with 1,212 beds.

[3] In 1997 the hospital merged with Baptist Memorial Health Care.

[4] The property and buildings were then sold to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.

[3] The buildings, except for a recently built emergency room annex which St. Jude converted into a Translational Trials Unit, were subsequently demolished to make room for an expansion.