The Alpine-Balsam area of Broadway in Boulder is changing before our eyes. Boulder Community Hospital (formerly on Broadway’s west side) has been replaced by new development, and the days are numbered for the Boulder Medical Center, at 2750 Broadway, on the southeast corner of Broadway and Balsam.
When the local, independent, physician-owned medical center opened in 1949, it ushered in an era of specialized medical care in Boulder. According to the center’s website, it plans to relocate “within the Boulder community.” Now, though — before the current building is demolished — is a good time to reflect on the center’s cooperative beginnings.
Boulder’s early general practitioners traveled all over the county — first in horse-drawn buggies and then in automobiles. With their black leather bags packed with morphine, ether, and chloroform, they set broken bones, amputated fingers and toes, delivered babies, and treated infectious diseases that included diphtheria, smallpox, and typhoid.
One of these physicians was Dr. Howard H. Heuston, a former Midwestern school administrator who switched careers to medicine after his first wife died from complications following childbirth. In 1920, Dr. Heuston moved to Boulder and went into partnership with Dr. Carbon Gillaspie. In later years, both served as Boulder mayors.
Drs. Heuston and Gillaspie were also colleagues of Dr. Fitz Henry Farrington. While in his patients’ homes, Dr. Farrington was known for asking to use the bathroom and then rummaging through their medicine cabinets to better understand their conditions. His son, Paul, and then his grandson, John, eventually took over his practice.
Then came World War II — a time of transition in all walks of life, especially medicine. Drs. Heuston and Gillaspie, along with other general practitioners of the 1930s, saw their younger colleagues join the ranks with more education and often in specialized fields of medicine.
At the war’s end, a new generation of doctors brought advances in medicine, including penicillin and new types of anesthetics, to their practices and were in high demand among patients. To keep their practices viable, several older physicians decided to join forces with their younger colleagues, leading to the founding of the Boulder Medical Center.
To do so, Drs. Heuston and Gillaspie had teamed up, in 1945, with three of the younger physicians – Drs. Joe Maurer, Christopher Martin, and Olaf Allison. That first partnership became known as the Boulder Medical Group. Almost immediately, these five doctors realized that they could not work out of a two-man office. They needed more space.
Meanwhile, Drs. Jack Bartholomew and Carl Gilman (each with his own established practice) were joined by Dr. Joseph Cowgill, director of the Mesa Vista Sanatorium. The three men worked together in a remodeled house on Spruce Street. Their quarters became more cramped when they accepted another colleague, Dr. John McDonald.
In 1948, Dr. Heuston, then 62 and a generation older than the others, opened his home for discussions about merging his group of five with Bartholomew’s group of four, along with one additional physician, Dr. Claude Bonham.
Eventually, the 10 physicians formed their own corporation. They purchased a two-and-a-half-acre site at 2750 Broadway, across the street from the former Boulder Community Hospital. Architect James H. Hunter designed the brick-and-stone building.
Each physician opened his own office in the new medical center. During an open house in 1949, 3,400 curious and enthusiastic Boulder residents toured the state-of-the-art facility.
As the years passed, additional specialists joined the center. One was Dr. William M. Johnson, an orthopedic surgeon. Johnson, a current Boulder County resident, opened his practice in 1967. At that time, he recalled, the center had 22 physicians. In an oral history interview archived at Boulder’s Carnegie Library, Johnson states that one of the advantages of the center was that the physicians were available to cover for one another when someone was out of town.
“I feel that the medical center provided not only me, but the community, with a valuable service — an excellent way to practice medicine,” Johnson said.
The medical center’s plan to redevelop the Broadway and Balsam property is in its early stages and still needs to go through development review and get building permits.
Once again, developers undermine the City’s own planning goals of 15 minute neighborhoods. Boulder Medical Center, the Ideal Market area are a PERFECT manifestation of a 15 minute neighborhood: Doctors offices blood clinic, emergency care, a grocery, dry cleaner, coffee shop, liquor store, gift shop, drug store, and a few restaurants/food joints right at the intersection of four different neighborhoods and what will eventually be a busy city office complex and housing. Why in the world would the city approve dismantling this facility? That would be going backwards. I urge the city to push the developers to propose a mixed use project with doc offices and housing. Lets keep the 15 minute neighborhood we have instead of imagining some future 15 minute neighborhood.
Absolutely agreed. With that gone I have to drive to a pharmacy and appointments, drive elsewhere if I want to meet for coffee or pick up some last minute food items. The nearest ice cream place will also be a drive. What is worse, there will be no views if the foothills. And those views are being blocked by 1/2 empty apartments/condos/affordable housing. Fill those FIRST and stop turning Boulder into anywhere USA. So very disappointing.
100% agree.
So many people I know use the Boulder Medical center that it would be a real shame if it’s demolished. I just hope they can find other places for housing and leave our medical facilities alone!!
I agree with Sarah. I live near by and everything is right here, including my doctor! I walk to her! This IS indeed going backwards if they allow this to happen. Everyone around is tired of the city managers packing us in like sardines, increasing traffic, and with more people comes more crime. Come on! Slow everything/growth way down. We need a breather! NO! to Boulder medical center creating a monstrosity on the tails of the overpriced municipal project/fake affordable housing across the street where they are proposing to try to raise the height limit. How obnoxious! and before people call me a NIMBY how about the importance of saving the character of a once really great cozy town. I was first here when locking your door was an option.
This will be a huge loss to the North Boulder Community and produce unnecessary stress on Foothills hospital. The urgent care center handles so much, so effectively, this is a negative for our community. This is not NIMBY talk. It seems like a developer land grab to build yet another housing complex that will likely do little to ease Boulder’s housing shortage, while removing an important care resource for a large number of Boulder residents, and force them into lower quality, big box urgent care centers.
So disappointed that the Medical Center will be demolished for more depressing new development.
If Age Well moves to NBRC, and the county building at Broadway & Iris becomes senior living, doesn’t it make sense to leave BMC in this location? Is there any coordination among these redevelopments? My aging parents use BMC and can take the Skip there in 10 min.
Boulder Medical Center has an impressive history. Their approach for running their medical practice caught the eye of folks at CBS News, CBS 60 Minutes did a feature story on what then was a completely unique and innovative medical practice, the Boulder Medical Center.
Maybe I am missing something…
1. It is the doctors of BMC who have decided that this facility has aged out; the “developers” are doing their bidding, maximizing the value of the parcels once the doctors made that decision.
2. The properties south of the BMC are not part of this. Ideal, etc. would remain. The community shopping center is a gem, truly “old Boulder”, and perhaps having more residents nearby would support those businesses more than BMC.
3. I have had experience with BMC for 40+ years, and the building is showing its age despite several renovations. Maybe the doctors see that too. And, the doctors know the demographics of the area.
4. Stuffing more people into Boulder is the credo of recent councils. Resist that instead of the NIMBYist response of putting them “elsewhere” in Boulder.