The Institute for Rehabilitation and Research was opened by William Spencer, MD, as the Southwestern Poliomyelitis Respiratory Center in 1951 at the peak of the US polio epidemic. It officially became The Texas Institute for Rehabilitation and Research in 1959, then just The Institute for Rehabilitation and Research in 1978. After the development of a vaccine in the early 1960s, Dr. Spencer shifted the practice to the rehabilitation of the catastrophically injured. As it expanded, the Institute recruited doctors who would become major contributors in specific areas of concern, such as Gunyon Harrison (pediatric cystic fibrosis), Carlos Vallbona (physiology and cardiology), Paul Harrington (orthopedic surgeon and developer of Harrington rods); and Bobby Alford (ENT). TIRR is affiliated with Baylor College of Medicine and the McGovern Medical School, and joined Memorial Hermann in 2006.
The Shriners Hospital for Children (Houston) is one of 22 hospitals in the non-profit Shriners network and is affiliated with the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, Baylor College of Medicine, the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, and Scott and White Hospital (based in Temple, Texas). The Houston branch had its origins in the Arabia Temple Crippled Children’s Clinic, which was located at Baptist Sanitarium between 1920 and 1932. The Clinic moved to Methodist Hospital in 1932, occupying its own “Blue Bird Cottage” from 1934 to 1949; the facility was named for its sponsors, Methodist’s Blue Bird Ladies Auxiliary. Between 1949 and 1952 it borrowed space in Hermann Hospital, before reopening in its own building in 1952. It was renamed Shriners Hospital for Crippled Children in 1966. The last building was completed in 1996. In January 2020, Shriners Houston announced that it would close in 2021 and consolidate with the Shriners burn hospital in Galveston.