General Hospital legacy hidden in reconstruction

According to Mitch Postel, Director of the San Mateo County Historical Association, the last survey of historic buildings in the City of San Mateo came to an end in 1989. The study focused primarily on San Mateo east of the El Camino Real. Hospital renovation began before western San Mateo could be surveyed. Thus, little attention has been called to the hospital's historic significance. "We do have some photographs (at the Archives), some reminders of how the hospital once looked", Postel said. "But at this point, there is not much other than that."

The southwest hospital wing -- added in 1954 -- endures, but it faces renovation into administrative space in 2001. The original Crystal Springs Rehabilitation site awaits sale. Of the original

1923 structure, reportedly only the original doors and the plinth -- the name sign across the top of the doors announcing "San Mateo Community Hospital at Beresford" -- are preserved.

Health Department spokesperson Micki Carter says the doors and plinth are currently stored at the County's Tower Road facility. "There are no current plans to make a historical exhibit," Carter says, "But they were preserved with that thought in mind."

Clearly, county government's focus on accreditation standards and service capacity took precedent over historical preservation. However, precious little remains of the 77 year old hospital, whose legacy is a storied history of public health care on the Peninsula, provided with no regard for ability to pay.

The first hospital -- public or private -- erected in San Mateo County was called Poor Farm. Located in a valley south east of the Crystal Spring Reservoir, Poor Farm first occupied the site of the county's Tower Road facilities in the 1870's. Providing medical care for the indigent, major health concerns faced by the 19th century facility included malaria and consumption, later known as tuberculosis. During the 1906 earthquake, many victims of bubonic plague came to Poor Farm for treatment. The facility also led the Peninsula's fight against influenza in 1918, tending to patients and distributing face masks to prevent the spread of the disease.

Poor Farm became Crystal Springs Rehabilitation Center in the 1920's, offering long term care to elderly patients, including those so destitute as to afford no other means of care.

Within thirty years the Rehabilitation Center would expand to a capacity of 124 beds. In 1923, an acute hospital called San Mateo Community Hospital emerged amid the rolling hills of Beresford, a community five miles south of San Mateo. Dr. Wood C. Bakers served as its first director, while William H. Crocker sat on the Board of Directors. The first buildings, situated on

what is now Edison Street and 39th Avenue, offered care for up to fifty patients at a cost of $1.95 a day. Residents from Stanford Medical School comprised most of the staff. By 1941, two more wings and 150 more beds had been added, making Community Hospital the largest health facility in the county. In 1954, the hospital added a southwest wing, bringing its capacity to 274 beds.

In the fifties, public pools closed and public gatherings folded during the polio scare, which claimed 93,000 victims in 1952 and 1953. Following Jonas Salk's breakthrough in 1957, San Mateo Community Hospital became the first hospital on the peninsula to treat polio victims. One long time resident remembers trudging with her older brother, up the steps of what is now the

Department of Health Services building. They had come for their polio vaccinations, but upon seeing the line of somber children with sleeves rolled up, they made an immediate tearful beeline for the exit.

The facility was named San Mateo County General Hospital in 1962. The name changed again in 1970, becoming Chope Hospital, in honor of the newly retired Dr. Harold Chope (1904-1976). Serving as San Mateo County health and welfare director from 1948 to 1970, Chope gained international recognition for his pioneering efforts in the fields of mental health, neuropsychiatry, and child welfare.

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