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Memphis, TN
Here we note noteworthy people and landmarks of the area that have now passed into history.
 | Baptist Memorial Hospital Medical Center (midtown) |
Once the
largest private hospital in the world with 2,000 beds, Baptist Memorial Hospital
was located in midtown Memphis where there was a concentration of
hospitals. That area was, and sometimes is still, called the medical
center. Since it opened as a 150 bed hospital in 1912,
Baptist was a city landmark. The hospital underwent numerous expansions
reaching its highest point in 1967 with the completion of a 18 story
tower.
At 6:45 Sunday morning November 6, 2005, this substantial landmark in
Memphis was intentionally demolished by carefully set explosives
causing the building to collapse upon itself into a huge pile of debris. The
924,000 square foot building's rubble was expected to take 11 months to
remove. Video of the November 6 implosion is available on-line from
several sources, including recordings from several angles from Baptist
Memorial Health Care.
A four story service
building, an eight-story Interns’ Residence and a 10-story Physicians
and Surgeons building were demolished earlier in 2005.Baptist Hospital had already expanded to locations out of the midtown area and the satellite hospital previously known as "Baptist East" located at I-240 and Walnut Grove Road became the main Baptist Memorial Hospital facility and the "East" portion of its name was dropped.
Baptist Memorial Health Care donated the midtown land to the Memphis Bioworks
Foundation, a non-profit corporation created in 2001 to
advance Memphis in biomedical technology and research. The new
research park, often called the biotechnology hub or biotech zone, was
forecast to be completed in six phases, concluding about 2016.
