Current Parkland Hospital turns 60 years old
When the “new” Parkland opened in 1954, the seeming expansiveness of the seven-story T-shaped building almost overwhelmed employees. In its first year, the new Parkland admitted 14,719 patients, delivered more than 4,000 babies and saw 57,256 emergency patients.
Today, nearly 60 years later, construction is all but complete on the 17-story new acute care hospital that dwarfs the current facility which first opened to patients on Sept. 25, 1954. Having served the residents for six decades, the current facility was not without controversy. Before the Parkland groundbreaking on April 26, 1952, politicians wrestled over a moral decision, which was reconstructed in a document entitled The Sound and the Fury in the Construction of Parkland Memorial Hospital.
An excerpt from those documents said: “They decided not to install air conditioning throughout the hospital. ‘This came mostly through Mr. R.L. Thornton’s insistence that facilities in the hospital should not be better on a free basis to patients than facilities in Baylor, St. Paul’s and Methodist hospitals, where the patient was paying for hospitalization’.”
“That meant that Parkland was built on an angle on Harry Hines Boulevard so that there was a cross breeze that would cool the building,” said Walter Jones, Parkland’s Senior Vice President of Facilities and Development. “Even with windows that would open, one could only imagine the temperatures in Dallas during the summer months.”
It was during a July heat wave in 1963 that Ed Maher, longtime chairman of the hospital board, announced plans for air conditioning Parkland in 1964. Architects were commissioned to draw plans for the second through seventh floors. At the time, the basement, ground floor, first floor and the clinic were air conditioned, but with the exception of a few window units, the remainder of the hospital was not. In December 1964, a $7.5 million bond issue was approved to expand the hospital and the upper three floors were added.
The bond issuance also provided funds for additional parking facilities, improvements at Woodlawn Hospital, expansion of the south wing to provide additional space for X-ray, labs, an emergency room, operating rooms, delivery rooms, labor rooms and a fourth floor for the outpatient clinic.
In November 1979, the Parkland Board of Managers asked County Commissioners to call an $80 million bond election to modernize the hospital’s aging facility. Dallas County voters overwhelmingly approved the bond and in 1981, construction began on the 10-floor north tower, a seven-floor outpatient clinic, five-story support building, completion of shelled-in space on seven floors of the south/south wing, a new special care nursery and renovation of 15 patient-care units.
“A lot has changed since the current Parkland opened its doors. The building looks nothing like it did in 1954. The only signs of the original structure are the ‘pinkish’ colored bricks visible on certain areas of the building,” Jones said. “There have also been major advances in both medicine and technology. And while we look at the current hospital and know we are providing high quality, safe patient care, we are still limited by a 60-year-old building.”
Limited, Jones said, in that the facility is land-locked with no room for expansion up or out. And limited in the height of the floor to ceiling crawl space needed to run wires to create a truly wireless environment.
But with just months to go before the last inpatient is admitted to the current facility and the first admitted to the state-of-the-art new Parkland hospital, one can’t help but think of the aging facility and the history contained within.
“If the walls could talk, how fascinating it would be hear of all the medical ‘firsts’ and the numerous times Parkland held a place in history,” Jones said. “And we can only imagine that generations from now people will be celebrating a whole new set of ‘firsts’ in the new Parkland.”
To learn more about Parkland’s history, please visit www.parklandhospital.com/history.
