Streetwise: Hospitals in the Western Neighborhoods
by Frank Dunnigan
August 2024
Frank Dunnigan, WNP member and columnist. - Many San Francisco hospitals in the western neighborhoods have transitioned over the years—sometimes prompted by declining patient occupancy, financial constraints, or updated life-safety requirements that doomed some older buildings. Here is a review of some current and long-gone institutions.
Children's Hospital, circa 1925 - Courtesy of a Private Collector.CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL—A general hospital for women and children (plus a School of Nursing) was in operation in Laurel Heights since the late 1800s, and was rebuilt and expanded many times (shown here circa 1925). It became part of Presbyterian Hospital (then newly-known as Pacific-Presbyterian Medical Center) in 1991, and that merged venture was then renamed California Pacific Medical Center. The Children’s Hospital facilities at 3700 California Street became known as the “California Campus” and the former Presbyterian facility on Buchanan Street known as the “Pacific Campus.” Following the opening of CPMC’s newer facilities elsewhere in San Francisco in 2018-19, the California Street facility was closed. Plans now call for the preservation of some buildings at the site and the demolition of others for a new housing community consisting of a mixture of single family homes and apartments—set to begin construction in 2025-26.
Read more about planned redevelopment of this site.
Ardenwood, 1940s - Marilyn Blaisdell Collection / Courtesy of Molly Blaisdell.CHRISTIAN SCIENCE BENEVOLENT ASSOCIATION CARE FACILITY—Opened at 15th Avenue and Wawona Street in 1930 (and today known as Arden Wood), the buildings continue to house treatment facilities that are in keeping with specific Christian Science beliefs and practices regarding health care and healing. Shown here in the 1940s, the buildings were designed by noted architect Henry Gutterson with a generous bequest from church members Marvin and Mary Alice Higgins.
Postcard view of Fort Miley VA Hospital, 1950s - Stanley A. Piltz, WNP Collection.FORT MILEY/VA HOSPITAL—Acquired by the U.S. Army in 1893, the Fort Miley site was used for coastal defenses of San Francisco Bay. Most of the original army buildings were demolished in 1934 to allow for construction of the Veterans Administration Hospital (shown here in the 1950s). The facility has been expanded multiple times, providing both in-patient and out-patient services to more than 310,000 veterans living in Northern California.
Postcard view of French Hospital, circa 1907 - Courtesy of Dennis O'Rorke.FRENCH HOSPITAL—Founded in 1851 on Rincon Hill as San Francisco’s first private hospital, the facility moved to Point Lobos Road (now Geary Boulevard) in 1895. New facilities were constructed in 1963, and the hospital is now known as Kaiser-Permanente-French Campus. In an interesting twist, the former Nurses’ Dormitory, located at the northeast corner of 6th Avenue and Anza Street, was sold by Kaiser to the University of San Francisco in 2000 as a student housing dorm—making it the westernmost point of USF, one mile away from the main campus. Listen to
Outside Lands Podcast #405 from November 14, 2020 about the history of French Hospital.
Earthquake damaged Hahnemann Hospital, 1906 - Courtesy of a Private Collector.HAHNEMANN HOSPITAL—Located adjacent to Children’s Hospital on California Street since just before the 1906 earthquake, the hospital operated as a homeopathic facility: a medical system based on the belief that the body can cure itself, with the help of tiny amounts of natural substances, like plants and minerals, that stimulate the healing process. In 1970, the hospital was renamed Marshall Hale Hospital, for a long-time benefactor. It later became part of the adjacent California Pacific Medical Center that had taken over Children’s Hospital.
Laguna Honda Hospital, circa 1925 - Courtesy of a Private Collector.LAGUNA HONDA HOSPITAL—Originally an almshouse in the post-Gold Rush era in 1866, Laguna Honda has been San Francisco’s long-term acute-care hospital offering publicly-funded services to local residents. Its main buildings opened in 1926. Today, with 780 beds, the facility provides a safety net over and above the services of San Francisco’s other non-profit health-care facilities for those in need.
Shriners Hospital, July 29, 1948 - Marilyn Blaisdell Collection / Courtesy of Molly Blaisdell.SHRINERS HOSPITAL—At a Shriners Convention in Portland in 1920, members voted unanimously to establish Shriners Hospitals for Children, serving those up to 14 years of age. Eventually, the system grew to 20-plus locations across the country. The first was in Shreveport, Louisiana in 1922 and San Francisco became the third site, opening in 1923 at 1601 19th Avenue. Expanded several times over the years, by 1990 the facility was the sole remaining pre-World War II hospital still in use in San Francisco. In August of that year, the Shriners organization announced the construction of a new hospital in the Sacramento area, and that facility opened in 1997. Use of the five-acre parcel in the Sunset District was a controversial topic for several years before a plan finally emerged that combined some new single family town homes with additional facilities built for a new senior living facility, as well as some historic preservation of the main building—shown here in 1948 when it was already 25 years old. Read more about the history of the 19th Avenue building in the
Streetwise column from June 2021.
St. Mary's Hospital, circa 1952 - Courtesy of Private Collector.ST. MARY’S HOSPITAL—Opened in 1857 on Rincon Hill at the northwest corner of 1st and Bryant Streets, St. Mary’s Hospital and Medical Center is the oldest continuously operating hospital in San Francisco. Following the 1906 fire, St. Mary’s established temporary facilities at 2344 Sutter Street before settling into a new long-term home at 2200 Hayes Street between Shrader and Stanyan by 1909 (shown here in January 1952, just one month after this author’s birth there). This facility was expanded several times before being replaced by the present structure in 1972, when the formal address was changed to 450 Stanyan Street. St. Mary’s also operated a Nursing School, and beginning in 1951, its graduates received their Bachelor’s Degrees in Nursing from the adjacent University of San Francisco. Long operated by Dignity Health Care, it was announced in July 2023 that St. Mary’s would cease to be a Catholic hospital and would be acquired by the University of California—a merger that occurred on August 1, 2024, with the hospital renamed UCSF-St. Mary’s.
UCSF, 1955 - Courtesy of Private Collector.UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SAN FRANCISCO (UCSF)—The present UCSF campus on Parnassus Avenue has been an architectural and health-care presence in the western neighborhoods for well over 125 years, with two separate hospitals—Moffitt and Long—currently operating side-by-side.
A group of colleges—medicine/dentistry/pharmacy—originated with the Toland Medical College, founded in North Beach in 1862. By 1872, the school had an affiliation with the University of California, but its operations continued to be supported by the tuition of students. In 1895, the state legislature funded the construction of several buildings, then known as the “Affiliated Colleges,” on land donated by Adolph Sutro. (Adolph’s daughter, Emma, was a graduate of the UC medical school). In 1902, the facility was formally taken over by the University of California. Significant expansion has occurred since the campus was a 300-bed hospital/research facility in the 1930s.
In 1985, UCSF was significantly expanded through the purchase of the 10.3-acre property at 3333 California Street that the Fireman’s Fund Insurance Company had developed and occupied in the 1950s on the site of the old Laurel Hill Cemetery. Fireman’s Fund eventually constructed a new corporate campus in Marin County, moving its operations to Novato in 1982. UCSF then operated academic and administrative offices with 1,200 employees at 3333 California Street (known as UCSF-Laurel Hill) for nearly 35 years, until 2023. That location is now in the hands of private developers who plan a residential community at the site.
Beginning in 1999, UCSF began developing facilities in the Mission Bay neighborhood. That facility now provides space for both research and patient care. Once the Mission Bay campus was completed in 2015, there was a renewed focus at the Parnassus campus, which was renamed the UCSF Helen Diller Medical Center at Parnassus Heights, in honor of a bequest of $500 million from a generous local donor—the largest single donation in UCSF’s history and one of the largest ever to a U.S. university. Plans are currently underway for the replacement of the Moffitt Hospital (shown here under construction in 1955) prior to its planned decommissioning in 2030 when it will no longer meet new statewide seismic-safety guidelines for hospital buildings.
UCSF is now also affiliated with the operation of multiple other local hospitals, including the institutions that were once known as Mount Zion, Oakland Children’s, St. Francis, and St. Mary’s.
Read more about the history of buildings at the Parnassus site, and
about the mixed-use development set to rise at the former UCSF-Laurel Hill site.
US Marine Hospital, circa 1935 - Marilyn Blaisdell Collection / Courtesy of Molly Blaisdell.U.S. PUBLIC HEALTH SERVICE HOSPITAL—Originally founded as the San Francisco Marine Hospital on Rincon Hill in 1853, the building was severely damaged in the Hayward Earthquake of 1868 and abandoned. A new facility opened in the Presidio of San Francisco in 1875, and it operated until 1912 when it became known as the U.S. Public Health Service Hospital. The building shown here opened in 1932, and later had additional wings constructed on the left and right in the 1950s. With expanded methods of health care insurance coverage in place by the 1980s, thus allowing patients access to many different facilities, this hospital was shut down. From 1982 to 1988, the buildings housed the Defense Language Institute, which then moved to Monterey in late 1988. Following the Presidio’s conversion from a military site to operation by the National Park Service in 1994, the old hospital building was eventually sold to the City & County of San Francisco. It remained vacant for decades until it was renovated (with the added wings from the 1950s demolished in 2009) into the Presidio Landmark apartments. Opened in 2010 and located at 1801 Wedemeyer Street, the exterior appearance is essentially similar to this 1935 image of the hospital.
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