Monday Memories: Top of Utah hospitals
Thomas D. Dee Memorial Hospital at 24th and Harrison Boulevard
State Tuberculosis Hospital in Ogden
Completion of St. Benedict’s Hospital
Aerial of St. Benedict’s Hospital at 3000 Polk
A patient pauses in his ride to look down on Bushnell Hospital: July 21, 1945
McKay-Dee Hospital located at 38th and Harrison
Moving of patients from the Dee Hospital to the new McKay-Dee Hospital
Interior of one of the ambulances used to transfer patients to Dee Hospital
This week’s Monday Memories takes a look at the old hospitals.
The Thomas D. Dee Memorial Hospital was located at 24th Street and Harrison Boulevard in Ogden. It was founded in 1910 in memory of Thomas by his widow Annie Taylor Dee and their children Maude, Mary Elizabeth, Margaret, Edith, Florence, Rosabelle and Lawrence. On July 12, 1969, the “Dee” passed into history, and patients were moved to the new David O. McKay Hospital at 3939 Harrison Blvd., according to Intermountainhealthcare.org. A new McKay-Dee Hospital was built about five blocks to the south in the early 2000s and the old McKay demolished.
St. Benedict’s Hospital opened on Sept.18,1946 at 3000 Polk Ave. in Ogden. Sisters of the Order of St. Benedict came from St. Joseph, Minnesota, to Ogden with the purpose to give glory to God through service to humankind. The sisters embraced Ogden with their Benedictine holistic philosophy of healing — “caring for the sick as if they were Christ in person,” according to ogdenregional.com. A new St. Benedict’s was built in the 1970s in Washington Terrace. It is now named Ogden Regional Medical Center. The old St. Benedict’s is now a residential manor.
The Bushnell General Military Hospital was located in Brigham City from August 1942 to June 1946. It treated amputations, maxillofacial surgery, neuropsychiatric conditions and tropical diseases. Bushnell was one of the first hospitals to experimentally use penicillin.
The Utah State Tuberculosis Hospital was built in Ogden in 1940. It was filled to capacity from the moment the doors opened. In the late 1960s the Health Department participated in a statewide TB wipeout program using education and drugs. The result was fewer cases of TB and the closure of the Sanitorium a few years later, according to upha.org.
Photos are courtesy of Weber State University, Stewart Library, Special Collections.
If you have at least 10 photos and memories you’d like to share with us that were taken earlier than 1990, send an email to digitaleditor@standard.net with the subject titled “Monday Memories,” and we may use it in an upcoming installment.
