Today, St. Tammany Health System’s flagship St. Tammany Parish Hospital is a Northshore landmark, having grown to occupy several city blocks as the anchor of what has evolved to become a thriving medical district along Louisiana 21.
But how did it end up being built where it was built?
It’s a good question.
We answer it in today’s installment in our 70-part series celebrating the health system’s impending 70th anniversary on Dec. 1, 2024.
Installment No. 66: Where y’at?
Today’s artifact: A collection of newspaper clippings from 1951 chronicling the site-selection process for the original St. Tammany Parish Hospital building.
Why they are significant: By 1951, most of western St. Tammany Parish was on board with the idea of building a hospital on this side of the lake. The tireless members of the Women’s Progressive Union of Covington, a key early hospital champion, made sure of that.
But once political support and financial resources were lined up, the next question was where to build said hospital.
In June of that year, the members of the newly formed St. Tammany Parish Hospital Committee – Oliver J. Hebert, L.L. Landon, Norma Core, Gus Fritchie and Dr. M.J. Duplantis – began the process of zeroing in on a suitable location.
“It was stated that the committee was open to offers for the site and all would be considered,” read a story from the St. Tammany Farmer newspaper.
There were a few qualifications, though, as explained by a three-person site-selection subcommittee made up of Duplantis, Core and Fritchie.
“The site committee stated that the size of the plot of ground needed was approximately one and a half squares,” the Farmer reported. “That would be approximately 135,000 square feet of space for the building and grounds. This size was mentioned because of the possibility of expansion in the future, with the thought that other buildings may be needed at some time.”
Access to public utilities would also be a major consideration.
By August 1951, they had their site. Located along the then-heavily wooded Old Madisonville Highway – which is what locals called Louisiana 21 back then – they chose a site consisting of three city squares bounded by today’s South Tyler Street, West 8th Avenue, West 11th Avenue and Harrison Street.
Two of those three squares, numbers 810 and 910, were purchased from the Covington and St. Tammany Land and Improvement Co. for $3,500 each. Square 1010 was purchased from the estate of Esther Planche for $5,000.
It would take a while before construction would get underway, but ground was finally broken in May 1953. Working from plans drawn up by the New Orleans-based August Perez and Associates, crews would get to work shortly after, with the hospital finally opening its doors the morning of Dec. 1, 1954.
The hospital has grown considerably in the intervening years, of course, as predicted by its site-selection committee members. The first hospital expansion, in fact, came in 1958, just four years after it opened. Others followed. Repeatedly.
By 1978, the hospital petitioned the city to close two blocks of Harrison Avenue to accommodate that growth. It would later snap up land across South Tyler Street from the hospital and across West 8th Avenue.
Today, in addition to its bursting-at-the-seams main campus on the original hospital site, St. Tammany Health System operates more than two dozen clinics and other facilities throughout the community.
More are in the works, too – so stay tuned. Because as long as St. Tammany Parish keeps growing, St. Tammany Health System plans to grow right along with it, remaining true to its foundational promise to care for the community that founded it.
Do you have a St. Tammany Parish Hospital story or item to share? We’d love to hear about it! Email us at CommDept@stph.org.
Next week – Installment No. 67: When COVID came calling
Last week – Installment No. 65: The dream team