Thompson Memorial Hospital is history
Molly Shore
HILLSIDE DISTRICT -- After providing medical services for nearly a
century to Burbank and San Fernando Valley residents, Thompson Memorial
Medical Center Hospital is being demolished.
The hospital was founded in 1907 by Elmer H. Thompson, a young doctor
who arrived in Burbank from Wisconsin two years earlier with his pregnant
wife, a French poodle and a bicycle.
Then known as the Burbank Community Hospital, the two-story building
at Olive Avenue and 5th Street was the first hospital in the San Fernando
Valley.
Throughout the years, the institution grew in size, but it still
remained a small community hospital that served generations of local
families. In 1991, 60 doctors purchased the facility, renaming it in
honor of the founder.
Richard Wineland, a doctor who was on staff at the hospital for three
decades, and his daughter Jennifer Shelton were among the many people who
had close personal ties to the facility.
“Tears come to my eyes, because I spent 30 years here,” said Wineland,
an obstetrician and gynecologist, whose daughter’s three children were
among the 3,000 babies he estimated he delivered at Thompson.
Wineland’s daughter, Shelton, worked at the hospital from 1985 to
1996.
“I began my nursing career here,” she said. “It’s really sad to watch
it being torn down.”
Although the hospital was small, it had several notable firsts.
In addition to being the first hospital in the Valley, Thompson
performed the county’s first Caesarean section there. Kent Darrow and
George Robbins, both staff physicians, performed the city’s first
open-heart surgeries at the hospital.
The hospital hit troubled times in 1997 amid bitter internal struggles
and the loss of Medicare billing privileges.
Mary Alice O’Connor, a long-time board member on the Burbank Community
Hospital Foundation which ran the hospital, says that when Thompson
Memorial could no longer receive payment for services rendered to
Medicare patients, it signaledthe hospital’s death knell.
“We did everything to make it last,” she says, “ but government
doesn’t like small hospitals.”
After being shuttered for three years, the Cusumano Real Estate Group
purchased the property in June 2000.
“We are moving forward to develop a 183-unit, active senior complex,”
President Michael Cusumano said.
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THOMPSON MEMORIAL HOSPITAL TIMELINE
1907: Physician Elmer H. Thompson opens the 16-bed Burbank Community
Hospital, the first hospital in the San Fernando Valley, in a converted
two-story building at Olive Avenue and 5th Street.
1910: First wing of hospital is completed.
1925: Hospital is expanded to 50 beds and 15 bassinets.
1943: Thompson sells hospital to the Monte Sano Foundation.
1958: First open-heart surgery in Burbank is performed at the
hospital.
1991: Burbank Community Hospital is renamed Thompson Memorial Medical
Center Hospital after 60 physicians purchase the operation from the
Burbank Community Hospital Foundation, which retains ownership of the
facility and land;
1992: The medical center opens the area’s only 24-hour occupational
medicine program.
1993: Thompson Memorial becomes the first hospital in the San Fernando
Valley to allow chiropractors to use its facilities.
1997: Kentucky-based Vencor Hospital chain takes over the medical
center.
2001: Thompson Memorial is demolished.