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 Boulder Community Hospital (formerly on Broadway’s west side) has been replaced by new development, and the days are numbered for the Boulder Medical Center, at 2750 Broadway, on the southeast corner of Broadway and Balsam.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.
