The Salem Hospital began in 1873 at the bequest of Capt. John Bertram, who provided an 1805 brick mansion on Charter Street and a gift of $25,000. Eleven men formed the hospital’s Board of Trustees which held its first meeting on February 3, 1874. The group elected James B. Curwen as President and appointed seven physicians and seven surgeons of varying specialties. Alfred R. Brooks and his wife were selected as Superintendent and Matron. The new twelve-bed hospital at 31 Charter Street admitted its first patient on October 1, 1874. More than 500 patients were treated in the hospital’s opening year, 79 of which were admitted to the hospital for in-patient treatment. The number of in-patients steadily grew, reaching 469 during the fifth year in operation. Many people were treated at no cost or for a fee less than one dollar.
The hospital’s eye surgeon, Dr. David Coggin was especially busy as eye disease was widespread in the hospital’s early years. He performed the first cataract operation north of Boston at Salem Hospital in 1877 and in 1879 he treated more than 30 young girls from the nearby Orphan Asylum for trachoma, a bacterial disease which can lead to blindness, likely spread from a shared bath towel.
In 1884, a committee was created to address the growing needs of Salem Hospital. The following year, a three-story brick addition was erected on the building’s south side. The new building contained a first floor waiting room and the upper floors featured a lecture hall and sleeping quarters for nurses in training. The hospital’s first elevator was also installed. In 1887, a small cottage adjacent to the hospital was purchased for exclusive use as a maternity ward. Salem Hospital continued to buy surrounding buildings and growing the complex to include a laundry room and annex with an additional fourteen beds. In the first twenty years, the hospital treated more than 3,890 patients.
The hospital purchased additional land on Derby and Liberty streets and constructed a series of eight buildings with connecting corridors, which opened on May 16, 1903. The hospital now had one hundred beds. Additionally, a wharf across Derby Street was purchased to allow coal barges to make deliveries directly from the South River to the hospital.
The Great Salem Fire of 1914 started around noon on June 25th at the corner of Boston and Proctor streets, about one mile from Charter Street. When the fire started, the hospital had seventy-five patients but admitted more as the fire spread across the city. The inferno reached the hospital in the early evening and patients were forced evacuate to nearby hospitals in Lynn, Beverly, and Peabody. When the fire was extinguished, many of the hospital’s buildings had been completely gutted or destroyed. Refugee camps were set up at the North Shore Babies Hospital, Salem Willows, Forest River Park, and Bertram Field. Local churches offered space to serve as maternity wards and outpatient clinics.
Salem Hospital’s administration worked quickly to salvage what they could from the remaining buildings to care for patients until a new facility could be constructed. The Board of Trustees voted against rebuilding in downtown Salem and tasked a committee with finding a new location that would allow the facility to expand. The Board announced the purchase of twenty-five acres of land on Highland Avenue near Lookout Hill at their May 1915 annual meeting. The architectural firm Haven and Hoyt of Boston was selected to design the new building. The land was previously the Ware Estate and sat at the edge of what was then known as Great Pastures. The Lookout or Lookout Hill had long been the site of annual bonfires held on July 3rd as a kick-off to the city’s Independence Day celebrations.
The new hospital building on Highland Avenue opened in November 1917 and featured “twenty private rooms, forty-four semi-private rooms, twenty male and twenty female ward beds, nineteen maternity beds and eleven children’s beds…approximately 160 beds in all.” (Phippen, 1966)
The surviving old Salem Hospital buildings on Charter Street remained until the 1970s when they were razed during Urban Renewal.
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Digitized Archives
Salem Hospital Photographs and Ephemera
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