Pine Ridge, Which Opened In 1916, Was Regional Hospital For Blacks Only

Q: Was there once a hospital just for blacks in Palm Beach County?
A: For blacks in five South Florida counties, there was one choice. No matter how sick or hurt you were, you didn’t go to the nearest hospital – you went to Pine Ridge.
Black residents and hotel waiters had helped raise the money to build the hospital, originally made of wood and costing about $1,600. It opened April 15, 1916.
Conditions were spartan. To reach the second floor, workers had to pull themselves up on a “dumbwaiter” elevator. The facility had one operating room, on the second floor, with a large window equipped with a giant fan. X-rays were developed in a makeshift darkroom behind drapes under the stairwell and, with no “light box,” doctors had to hold them to a window to look at them. Instruments were a luxury.
By October 1947, the management of Pine Ridge had been transferred from Good Samaritan Medical Center to St. Mary’s. A new wing went on in 1948, adding a kitchen and eight maternity beds. On Nov. 1, 1956, Pine Ridge’s patients moved to the new, blacks-only “north wing” of St. Mary’s. The hospital was abandoned in the 1980s.
In 1999, Lia Gaines – executive officer of the Business and Economic Development and Revitalization Corp. and daughter of Gartrell Gaines, Pine Ridge’s only surviving doctor – won a $781,686 bid to convert the old building into a 12-unit apartment complex, mostly with money from loans and grants.