The Health District, long called the Civic Center, sits just northwest of downtown Miami. It runs from NW 20th Street south to the Dolphin Expressway and the Miami River, with I-95 and the Midtown Interchange on the east, and its spine is NW 12th Avenue. Allapattah lies to the north, Overtown to the east and Little Havana across the river to the south. It is one of the largest concentrations of medical facilities in the United States.
Development
The district grew around a single institution. Jackson Health System dates Jackson Memorial Hospital to 1918, and the surviving Alamo building from the original city hospital is preserved on the campus; the hospital was renamed in 1924 for Dr. James M. Jackson. The University of Miami Miller School of Medicine moved alongside it in the 1950s, turning the area into a teaching hospital campus. Jackson Memorial is among the largest hospitals in the country by bed count and houses the Ryder Trauma Center, Miami-Dade’s only Level 1 adult and pediatric trauma center. Other institutions include Holtz Children’s Hospital, Bascom Palmer Eye Institute, Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center, the Diabetes Research Institute, The Miami Project to Cure Paralysis, UHealth Tower, the Miami VA Medical Center, the FIU Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine and the Miami Dade College Medical Campus. Mid-century additions made it a government center as well, including the Richard E. Gerstein Justice Building and Lindsey Hopkins Technical College. Residential development is concentrated along the Metrorail corridor rather than on the campus itself.
Parks & Recreation
The district is institutional and has little parkland of its own. The Miami River Greenway runs along its southern edge, and the nearest substantial public open spaces are Lummus Park, east across I-95, and Jose Marti Park, across the river in Little Havana. A branch of the Miami-Dade Public Library System sits at the Metrorail station.
Transit
Two Metrorail stations serve the district on the shared Orange and Green line trunk: UHealth-Jackson, at NW 12th Avenue and NW 15th Street, which opened in 1984 as Civic Center and was renamed in 2024, and Santa Clara at NW 20th Street. Culmer and Allapattah stations bracket the district. There is no Metromover service, and Tri-Rail is reached by Metrorail at Miami Airport station or the Tri-Rail and Metrorail Transfer station. The City of Miami Trolley runs a dedicated Health District route, and buses serve NW 12th Avenue and NW 20th Street.