Northwest Hospital and Medical Center

Northwest Hospital and Medical Center, opened in 1960, is a large nonprofit health care provider located on 33 acres (13 hectares) in Seattle, Washington's Haller Lake neighborhood. It is Seattle's only independent private general hospital north of the Lake Washington Ship Canal.

According to the hospital's website, the impetus for its creation was the fact that, immediately following World War II, seven of the general hospitals that then existed in Seattle were located in Downtown or First Hill, leaving the city vulnerable in case of an emergency or nuclear attack. Washington state and the Atomic Energy Commission made plans for new suburban hospitals, of which Northwest was one, as its site then lay north of the city limits. In 1949, the future hospital site was purchased for $33,000; construction began on July 6, 1959, and the hospital opened on September 22, 1960.