National's Historic Sites

National's First Home - The Ryan Building, Davenport, Iowa - 1906
In 1906, John Fitz Alan Howard founded The National School of Chiropractic in the Ryan Building in Davenport, Iowa. Twelve years earlier, in that very same building, D.D. Palmer, founder of Palmer College of Chiropractic, performed the historic first adjustment. Little else is known about National's first site, but it is interesting to note the phonetic spelling of the word Chiropractic (KIROPRAKTIK) in the front window, something that was commonly done by practitioners at that time to familiarize the public with the term.

National's Second Home - 1732 W. Congress St., Chicago, Illinois - 1908
National relocated to 1732 W. Congress St., Chicago, Ill., in 1908. This move opened up many new opportunities for the school that were lacking in the small town of Davenport. Cook County Hospital, the largest charity hospital in the world, was just a block away. National students were admitted to all clinics, autopsies and surgical operations. Cook County also was among the first medical hospitals to admit chiropractic students into their diagnostic clinics and pathological laboratories in the early 1900s.

Another advantage of the move to Illinois was a favorable medical practice act that stipulated a difference between physicians and surgeons and those who were drugless physicians. Illinois was one of the first states to license chiropractors in the early 1900s.

The National School of Chiropractic was the first to establish a human dissection laboratory in chiropractic education on Wood Street. Finally, National interns had an abundance of patients in the Chicagoland area from which to draw.

National's Third Home - The Flatiron Building - 1910-1913
Beginning in 1910, rapidly increasing enrollment forced relocation to one of Chicago's first modern skyscrapers, the Flatiron Building (also known as the Wendell State Bank Building) at 1553 W. Madison. The college occupied the top two floors of this building, with the seventh floor occupied by the clinical departments, and the eighth floor occupied by administration offices and reception areas.

National's Fourth Home - 421-427 S. Ashland - 1913-1919
By 1913, the need for even more space required National to purchase the building at 421 S. Ashland Ave., which housed a reception room, executive offices, a correspondence department, laboratories, clinics, and adjusting rooms. A short time later, the addition of the double building at 427 S. Ashland Ave., completed the move out of the Flatiron Building, and offered space for a principal lecture hall, X-ray laboratories, rooms for resident patients, and National's first on-campus student housing facilities.

National's Fifth Home - 20 N. Ashland - 1920-1963
In 1920, National purchased the Chicago Theological Seminary at 20 N. Ashland Blvd., a landmark building that would serve the recently renamed The National College of Chiropractic (NCC) for the next 43 years. Considered the perfect teaching facility at the time, it provided expanded laboratory and clinical facilities, student housing and a gymnasium. The first two floors contained classrooms and a clinic. The top three floors were used as dormitory space for approximately 200 students, and the basement contained the anatomy, clinical diagnosis, microbiology, and pathology laboratories.

Isolated from the hospital experience after 1924, NCC opened the best-equipped and most popular chiropractic and drugless therapy clinic in the world in 1927. The "not-for-profit" Chicago General Health Service (CGHS) clinic was created in a two-story addition to the 20 N. Ashland building, accommodating as many as 120,000 patient visits per year. In 1965, after the college moved operations to the western suburb of Lombard, a new two-story building was constructed on the far west side of the 20 N. Ashland property specifically designed to house a new Chicago General Health Service clinic. As soon as the clinic moved to its new building at 1618 W. Warren Blvd., the college razed the "Old Main" and converted land into a parking lot for the clinic.

The Chicago General Health Service was closed in 2008 and replaced by the National University of Health Sciences Whole Health Center - Chicago in the University Village Marketplace near the University of Illinois at Chicago Campus. This facility includes seven treatment rooms, radiology room with digital processors, laboratory, and conference area.

National's Suburban Home - Lombard, Illinois - 1963 to date
In 1957, as the area around the Chicago campus began to change and enrollment declined, the college purchased 20 acres of unincorporated farmland in the western suburb of Lombard, close to the population density center of DuPage County, the richest county in Illinois. Interestingly, it was later discovered that the spot chosen for the campus at 200 E. Roosevelt Road had once been the site of the sanitarium of Dr. George E. Boffenmeyer. Dr. Boffenmeyer espoused the principles of hydrotherapeutics, fasting and massage, uncannily close to the prechiropractic clinical interests of John Fitz Alan Howard.

The first classes were held in Janse Memorial Hall on May 13, 1963. Janse Hall featured a gross anatomy laboratory with stadium-type seating, five beautifully appointed laboratories, three lecture halls, a library, faculty room, administrative and business offices, a lunchroom, lounge, and bookstore and supply center. By September, the 8,000-square-foot Lombard Chiropractic Clinic opened to the public on the lower level with its own private entrance.

Today, the Lombard campus has expanded to 32 acres, which includes five academic structures and four dormitories. Three more acres of residential and commercial property are part of the campus complex.

National's Florida Campus - St. Petersburg, Florida - 2009 to date
In June 2008, NUHS President James Winterstein and Dr. Carl Kuttler, president of St. Petersburg College (SPC) of Pinellas County, Florida, signed a historic partnership agreement allowing NUHS to offer the DC degree in St. Petersburg through SPC's University Partnership Center. In Fall 2009, National's Florida campus welcomed its first class of DC students, utilizing a combination of its own facilities and shared laboratories and classrooms at SPC's Caruth Health Education Center. National continues to expand its facilities and faculty in St. Petersburg, and offers the same quality DC program that is offered at its Lombard campus.