Vincent Memorial Hospital

January, 2008

Here's another South Huntington avenue institution I didn't know existed. Vincent Memorial merged with Mass General as an OB/GYN department. It survives to this day in that form, as described here. The photo below shows that the building is being refurbished for a new tenant. The building sits at the intersection of Heath street and South Huntington avenue.

Note: I just learned that the Vincent hospital became the Longwood, so I certainly did know it existed - I was born there!



Boston Daily Globe February 21, 1907


Work Begins At Once. Vincent Memorial Hospital on South Huntington Av To Have All Modern Conveniences.


The Vincent memorial hospital will be built at once. The contract has been let and it is expected that the building will be completed by next November. The plans are by Charles Bruen Perkins, and provide for a brick structure with terra cotta trimmings, employing the latest and best in hospital construction.

The location of the land purchased recently on South Huntington av overlooking Jamaica way and the park, which cost $44,000. The building will have a frontage of 70 feet on Huntington av and a depth of 60 feet. There will be three entrances, one at the front and one at each side, opening into a wide hall running the width of the building.

It is so planned that its capacity can be doubled when it shall become necessary by adding on to the rear, maintaining symmetry of the hospital and the effectiveness of its interior arrangements

The front entrance opens into a vestibule and here is placed the large electric elevator designed to hold cots and transfer patients without distress.

At the right of the first floor are the reception room and nurses' sitting room, dining room and pantry three servants rooms, the housekeeper's room and the night nurses' room. On the left side are five rooms for nurses.

The second floor contains the office, the matron's room with bath, diet kitchen, three private rooms each containing one bed, one ward containing four beds, one ward with two beds and a sun parlor.

On the third floor as a doctor's room at the front, the etherizing room, the sterilizing room, the operating room, the doctor's dressing room, a diet kitchen, one private room, one eight-bed ward, one four-bed ward, and a sun parlor Provision is made for a roof garden.

The refrigerator, pantry, servants' dining room, locker room, laundry, linen room, a storeroom, the boiler room a man's room and a coal room are in the basement. There are bathrooms and toilets on each floor and large linen closets.

The finish and doors throughout are hardwood with hospital b(?)ses and the walls are finished in hard plaster. All the operating rooms, diet kitchens, etc, have hygienic floors. The lighting will be both electricity and gas.