For Health Reasons . . . : Queen of Angels Closes Its Doors, Moves In With a Partner

Dr. Walter Wieman, seated amid half-filled packing boxes in a disheveled office, cocks his head to one side, trying to extract dates from his memory.

The photograph, he decides, was taken in about 1916 in front of his aunt’s house on a high, grassy hill that loomed over a valley dotted with cottages. Plopped on the ground in front of the nine standing adults are two little boys, one being Wieman at age 12.

Seventy three years later, the aged physician can recall no ambitions he had that day, certainly none that would indicate his life’s work. Ironically, though, the photograph held a clue.

A field just to Wieman’s right in the picture is the spot where, 10 years later, ground would be broken for a new Catholic hospital that would be called Queen of Angels. Nine years after that, a 31-year-old Wieman would begin his medical residency there.

A Last Visit

This week, after 54 years on the Queen of Angels staff, Wieman stopped in for a last visit.

The tall, white Los Angeles landmark building, with its Spanish-style red-tile roof, built 63 years ago through the perseverance of a band of Franciscan nuns, officially closes its doors today and merges with the newly modernized Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center two miles away.

The Queen of Angels operation--medical and administrative staff, support personnel and salvageable furniture and equipment--will have been moved by the afternoon.

“On the one hand, it will be a good thing to work in a brand new, modern building,” the 84-year-old Wieman said this week during his goodby visit. “But on the other, it’s hard to leave a place you know so well.”

As he talked, nurses, technicians and maintenance people were busy all over the hospital, tagging and packing equipment and shutting down wards. The last baby was delivered earlier in the week, the last surgery performed a few hours later.

“It’s a sad day for a grand lady,” said operating room technician Ruth Raymond, as she stacked gurneys with boxes that were to be taken to the loading dock.

The merger of Queen of Angels and Hollywood Presbyterian is an attempt to cure two cases of “excess capacity,” a malady that in recent years has plagued hospitals throughout the country.

The 404-bed Queen of Angels, though financially solvent, was often left with more than half its beds empty. The 395-bed Hollywood Presbyterian complex also had been operating half-full. In addition, it was going broke.

To improve the chances of survival of both facilities, the merger agreement calls for the Illinois based-Franciscan Sisters of the Sacred Heart, owners of Queen of Angels, to assume Hollywood Presbyterian’s $50-million debt. In turn, Hollywood Presbyterian is to provide space for both operations.

The agreements also called for layoffs at both facilities--100 at Queen of Angels and 300 at Hollywood Presbyterian. The joint operation will be called Queen of Angels/Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center.

No Abortions

Catholic rather than Presbyterian policies will rule. There will be no abortions, tubal ligations or vasectomies.

The cafeteria and two auxiliary buildings at the 10-acre Queen of Angels complex will remain open indefinitely to serve social service programs that lease the buildings, but officials have not decided the fate of the 63-year-old, 14-story main structure.

One suggestion has been to use it as a permanent movie set, to take advantage of its period look and a 150-foot chapel that is more ornate--with stained-glass windows and fresco-covered walls--than many free-standing churches.

The building was once a centerpiece of Los Angeles’ hospital community, second in bed space only to the massive County-USC Medical Center.

After the Hollywood Freeway was built, it became something of a landmark to motorists, rising out of its hilltop like a stiff-backed sentinel. During its heyday in the 1940s and ‘50s, a significant proportion of babies born in the county were delivered there, including a smattering of celebrities, said Doris Stanley, who has been on the Queen of Angels administrative staff for 29 years.

Nursing School

Among them, said Stanley, are Maureen Reagan and the last three children of Kathryn Crosby, second wife of Bing and a graduate of the hospital’s old nursing school.

According to Stanley, Elvis Presley was once treated for a broken finger at the hospital.

Loretta Young was a patient on several occasions.

“She was very involved with our Santa Rita Clinic,” a health facility for poor people, Stanley said. “She may have been instrumental in getting her friends to come.”

“This really wasn’t a celebrity hospital, as such” Wieman said. “It was just big, and everybody came here because of its reputation.”

It didn’t hurt, Wieman said, that the hospital’s upper rooms have some of the best views in the city, with one side of the building facing downtown, another Hollywood and another the ocean.

The hill that the Franciscan sisters built their hospital upon straddles the Echo Park and Silver Lake districts. Representatives of the order arrived in Los Angeles in the early 1920s, with the intention of raising money to build a hospital.

After more than a year of literally begging door to door to pay for their keep and to build their hospital fund, their leader reportedly walked into an office of the Bank of Italy (now Bank of America) and informed a bank officer of her need for $600,000.

“Without asking for references or security . . . (the bank officer) told us that he would have the money ready,” recalled a nun quoted in the Queen of Angels history published in 1966.

The hilltop site along Bellevue Avenue was chosen for the construction of the 110-bed hospital, according to the history work, because it was close to both Sunset Boulevard and Temple Street, two of the city’s busiest thoroughfares, and because it was near but not inside the booming downtown.

Bustling Ward

Wieman said that in the 1940s and ‘50s, the hospital was one of the busiest in the city, with a full nursing school, a well-regarded plastic surgery department and a bustling maternity ward. In the 40 years between 1926 and 1946, according to hospital records, more than 98,000 babies were born there.

It was not uncommon, through the years, Stanely said, for people to show up at the hospital, state they had been born there and ask for a tour.

The first Queen of Angels baby, Curtis Bangs, did just that in October, 1962, on his 36th birthday. He had his parents in tow and a local baker provided a cake for the occasion.

The final birth at the hospital--a 7-pound, 5-ounce boy named Kendrick--occurred Monday at 9:45 a.m, 2 hours and 15 minutes before the admitting room closed.

Stanley had been hoping the baby would be named Angel, in honor of The Queen.