Virtua Health held a topping off ceremony for the Marvin Samson Pavilion at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Camden. The nearly 200,000 SF tower anchors a $500 million expansion and opens in spring 2028 with 78 private rooms and 10 operating rooms.
Construction crews at Virtua Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital have placed the final steel beam atop a new patient tower, completing the structural frame of the Marvin Samson Pavilion. The building honors a longtime Virtua trustee whose $5 million pledge ranks as the largest philanthropic gift in the health system’s history.
Rising to nearly 200,000 SF, the pavilion anchors a $500 million renovation and expansion program on the Camden campus. Six of its seven floors are devoted to patient care, and the addition enlarges the hospital by roughly 35 percent while serving as a redesigned main entrance.
More than 100 guests attended the topping off ceremony, a tradition in which participants sign the final beam before a crane lifts it into place. Rev. Jon Peter Thomas, vicar general for the Diocese of Camden, blessed the 700 pound beam in a gesture echoing the hospital’s founding under the Franciscan Sisters of Allegany. A copy of the prayer and a St. Francis medallion will be sealed within the finished roof.
Planning centers the pavilion on complex specialties that already draw patients from across New Jersey, among them cardiovascular care, organ transplantation, and a neurosciences program operated with Penn Medicine.
Located at Haddon and Euclid avenues, the pavilion will hold 78 private patient rooms, 10 operating rooms with two hybrid suites, eight cardiac catheterization labs, three electrophysiology labs, two GI endoscopy rooms, 40 surgical prep and recovery rooms, a neuro-surgical stroke intervention suite, and a centralized post-anesthesia care unit with 40 adaptable bays. Virtua Health expects to complete the project in spring 2028.