Apr. 7--The story of the Minnetonka Hospital -- a modest 15-bed operation set up in a large Wayzata home in 1928 -- stirs memories of a simpler time.
"It was harder in some ways but it was simpler in some ways," said Joanie Holst, vice president of the Wayzata Historical Society.
On Thursday, the Historical Society will host a presentation on the history of the hospital, which was torn down in 1964. Holst, who has been gathering information from a variety of sources to prepare for the event, said the hospital is just one part of the city's rich history.
It's important to gather recollections of the hospital now while the remaining few who experienced it are still alive, she said.
Grace McKay, an 87-year-old Plymouth resident, recalls staying at the hospital for a week after having her appendix removed.
One morning in 1947, the then-25-year-old McKay felt a pain like never before and rushed over to Dr. Carl Martinson, who'd been her doctor since she was 5 years old and delivered her younger siblings.
McKay remembers the hospital as quaint, intimate and family-oriented.
"It was quite a bit different from hospitals today," she said. "Today they're less personal."
The home on Lake Street was transformed into a hospital in 1928, when the Drs. Martinson, Edward Mitchell and John Varner purchased it and made the living room, parlor and dining room into surgical and obstetrics quarters. Upstairs bedrooms became patient and staff quarters. The kitchen stayed as is, and was used to make home-cooked meals for everyone who worked and stayed there.
"You don't get food like that in the average hospital today," said 92-year-old Elmer Martinson, Carl Martinson's son.
Most aspects of the hospital were makeshift by today's standards.
There was no elevator, so patients were carried upstairs on stretchers after surgery.
"I can still remember seeing them carry people up from the first floor to the second floor on those steep steps," said Martinson, who also was a doctor and worked at the hospital from time to time. "They'd strap them on so they didn't slide off." Luckily, no one was ever dropped, he said.
When the hospital was short on beds, some patients' cots were moved onto the front porch.
Prices reflected the time period as well. Room and board at the hospital went for $2.50 per day. Having a baby delivered cost $35.
The hospital ran a successful maternity ward, delivering 1,545 babies with no maternal mortalities, Holst said. That doesn't mean there were no infant mortalities, she added, but no one knows for sure how many.
In 1957, the Minnetonka Hospital got an incubator, which it used within days of its arrival when a premature baby was born, Holst said.
"They had, for a time, as modern equipment as any hospital around," Holst said. "They were pretty up-to-date."
Eventually, however, the hospital's size could no longer meet the needs of the community, and it was forced to close. The news came as a major disappointment to the many local residents who depended on it.
"It was quite community-based," Martinson said. "People liked the friendly atmosphere, the smallness."
And that was the standard of the era, Holst said.
"It just sounds like such a quaint, fun little environment," she said, "Back then, it was just what they did."
Tara Bannow is a University of Minnesota student on assignment for the Star Tribune.
IF YOU GO...
What: A history of Minnetonka Hospital in Wayzata
Where: Wayzata Community Room, 600 Rice St. E.
When: 7 p.m. Thursday
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