On May 19, 1920, the area’s first permanent hospital opened on the lakefront in West Palm Beach with 35 beds. By 1928 Good Samaritan had grown to 135 beds, with state-of-the-art operating rooms and a Class A rating from the American College of Surgeons.
Read more about the history of the medical community in Palm Beach County from the Palm Beach County Medical Society.
Good Samaritan Hospital in 1920 (Photo Courtesy Historical Society of Palm Beach County)
The hospital and surrounding area in 1927. Note that this is before Flagler Drive was constructed. (Photo Courtesy Historical Society of Palm Beach County)
In the 1940s (Photo Courtesy Historical Society of Palm Beach County)
Good Samaritan Hospital and the surrounding area in the 1950s (Photo Courtesy Historical Society of Palm Beach County)
The hospital today (Palm Beach Post file photo)
Tags: hospitals, This Week in History, West Palm Beach
On May 10, 1948, the city welcomed a new city hall on Second Street, across from the county courthouse. The former city hall, at Poinsettia Avenue and Datura Street became an office building. The 1948 building was demolished in 1981.
The old “new” city hall (Courtesy Historical Society of Palm Beach County postcard collection)
The 1980 city hall building (Palm Beach Post staff file photo)
Tags: buildings, city hall, This Week in History, West Palm Beach
The Woman’s Club of West Palm Beach, founded in 1910, acquired a lakefront lot for a clubhouse in 1916. Plans for the building were finalized in 1917, and by August of that year the building was completed.
The city commission considered the site as a location for a new city hall in 1973, and a 1984 city-sponsored competition for waterfront designs required that the old library and woman’s club buildings remain standing.
Aerial view of the woman’s club building in the 1970s. (Palm Beach Post staff file photo)
In 1995 city officials bought out the club’s 99-year lease, which dated back to 1916, but the plan to turn the building into a children’s museum never materialized and the building was demolished in 1996 to make room for more open park space and a better location for one of SunFest’s main stages.
It was the end of an era when the Woman’s Club of West Palm Beach held its last meeting on May 19, 1997.
From a Palm Beach Post story about the last meeting:
Women wore white kid gloves and didn’t work if they were married back when Mildred Hetterich, 86, joined the Woman’s Club of West Palm Beach.
These were the 1940s and the ladies of the club were busy having trees planted, libraries stocked and clothing shipped to children during the war.
They gave out scholarships in home economics. They were 400 members strong.
On Monday, Hetterich and 19 other remaining members - average age around 80 - dressed in their luncheon finest and watched their institution slip into history.
“We just hate to give up the club,” said Nell-Jo Bailey, 94, of West Palm Beach, a member for 55 years, her eyes watering as she made the slow journey to her car after the club’s final meeting. “We had a lot of pleasure with it.”
The club - a symbol of civic duty from an age before Supermoms and two-career marriages - has disbanded after 87 years.
The ladies listened: The last call to order. The last rap of the gavel with the light-pink ribbon. The last reading of the club pledge, “Keep us, O God, from pettiness; let us be large in thought, in word, in deed. … ”
They gazed: At the pot of purple bougainvillea, the club flower. At the scrapbook with yellowed pages dating to 1912. At the time-worn faces of their oldest members as, with trembling hands, they unwrapped honorary gifts.
The club was founded in 1910 as part of a national federation of women’s clubs dedicated to “civic betterment” and “moral and social uplift,” as the club bylaws state.
In its day, the club has raised money for local hospitals, libraries, museums, schools and children’s programs.
The club’s first project, in 1912, was to buy trash bins for the city’s streets. At that time, the club’s $5 donation to the state kindergarten fund was a lot of money, said Graham. And a seminar on “labor-saving methods in homemaking” was all the rage.
But the club’s membership began to dwindle in the 1970s as women left the home for the work world, members said. New members stopped joining - they couldn’t attend the afternoon meetings. There are now 40 members, some of whom are too ill to make roll call - or can no longer drive.
A turning point came when their clubhouse on Flagler Drive was sold to the city in 1994.
The building, built in 1917, was supposed to be renovated for a children’s museum, said Vice President Nancy Vogt, but it was ultimately destroyed.
Morale was never the same.
“It broke the spirit of the group,” Vogt said, leaving the meeting at Kristine’s catering hall in Lake Worth, which has served as a makeshift clubhouse since the sale. “We don’t even go down Flagler Drive anymore. We don’t want to see the barren plot.”
Now, with no one left to assume leadership, the ladies who served so long this century return to their homes.
Instead of white kid gloves, Bailey takes a walker. And instead of tackling the troubles of the world, she and the rest of club carry the burdens of their failing health.
And their memories. Of an era when ladies would stay home while husbands worked and, as Hetterich said, “It was a joy to come to the woman’s club. It was an honor to be asked to join.”
Tags: building, West Palm Beach
Get ready for SunFest (tomorrow through Sunday on the West Palm Beach waterfront) by taking a trip back to SunFest 1983 (click on the images below to see the the full pages from the Historic Archive of The Palm Beach Post):
Tags: festivals, Sunfest, West Palm Beach
On April 30, 1962, the former home of the West Palm Beach Library opened at the head of Clematis Street, replacing the nearby Memorial Library, built in 1923. The 1962 building was demolished in 2009 to make way for a clear view of the waterfront.
Read more about the history of the West Palm Beach Library here.
Tags: buildings, libraries, This Week in History, West Palm Beach
