The hospital was officially chartered in 1882 and on Feb. 15, 1886, the forerunner to Allegheny General Hospital opened its doors. In 1887, the hospital established a children's wing, and in 1889, an ambulance was donated to the hospital; AGH would operate its own ambulance service for the next 64 years. A hospital annex was opened in June 1892, giving AGH additional surgical space. At the turn of the century, the hospital's directors began collecting funds for a new AGH, to be built just a block away, also along Stockton Avenue. The seven-story, 400-bed facility cost $620,000, and opened in 1904. The new space included more modern laboratory facilities: separate rooms for urinalysis, blood work, bacteriology, and autopsies. Within the decade, the hospital's board president, Dr. Maitland Alexander, convinced the kin of steel magnate William H. Singer to build a new, three-story research laboratory behind the hospital, which opened in 1916 and would later be known as the Singer Research Institute (now called the AHN Research Institute). Like many hospitals of that era, AGH distinguished itself during wartime; AGH was among the first medical institutions in the country to offer its services to the U.S. Department of War during WWI, and in 1918, the AGH Red Cross Unit made its way from Pittsburgh to Bourbonne-les-Bains, France, where a complement of AGH employees manned a French military hospital.