By KATY SAVAGE
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LEBANON — Ed Ashey remembers when Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon was in Hanover.
Back in the early 1940s, Ashey, 79,remembers walking through the former “dungeon”—like building on Maynard Street in Hanover to get his tonsils removed as a 4-year-old child.
“I can still smell the ether — thought I would suffocate,” said Ashey, a Lebanon historian.
That was when the hospital was called Mary Hitchcock Memorial Hospital. It was a smaller building back then that served local Upper Valley residents.
The hospital building was demolished in 1995 after the patients and staff moved to its current location in 1991 with a new building.
Mary Hitchcock Memorial Hospital, now Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, is celebrating its 125th anniversary tis month with a full slate of speakers and events.
Significant medical achievements have been made in the 125 years it’s been open, including the first X-ray, which was performed in 1896.
The hospital was built in 1893 by Hiram Hitchcock in memory of his late wife. It opened May 3 of that year. It grew significantly in the 1940s with a $1 million grant from Marianne Faulkner. The hospital grew again with a $3 million federal grant to build the Norris Cotton Cancer Center in 1972 — the first regional cancer center in New England.
The most significant change, however, was the hospital’s move.
The facility reached capacity in the late 1980s and early 1990s. It was clear to then-CEO Jim Varnum that a new building was needed.
Varnum, who was CEO from 1978 until he retired in 2006, led the hospital through the transition.
“It was traumatic for many people,” he said, explaining there was nostalgia in leaving the old building behind. “It was leaving the place people had been born and raised and families had gone to.”
The move took about three years to plan. Construction of the new building started in 1988. The official move took place Oct. 5, 1991.
Varnum remembers the day well.
The move started at 5 a.m. with the arrival of dozens of moving vans, he said. About 250 patients moved as well as all the hospital staff and lab equipment and other medical supplies. The old building was empty by around 2 p.m., he remembers.
“I remember walking through it at the end of the day and it was a very quiet place,” Varnum said. “It was a very funny feeling that ‘this is what it used to be’ and now it was going to be something else.”
Dartmouth College purchased the land where the Mary Hitchcock building was situated.
The move brought many changes to the hospital. The much larger building has allowed growth opportunities and partnerships with other facilities.
Dartmouth-Hitchcock spokesperson Rick Adams said the hospital will continue to expand.
He said just about everything has changed in those 125 years, from new technology to new surgical techniques and practices. One thing has remained the same.
“No matter what happens, no matter what evolves, it’s always about patients,” Adams said.
“That patient-centric approach has always been at the center.”
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