Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
The Alamo isn't just Miami's firsthospital.
It's a place full of history, mystery,and possibly even ghosts.
right here on the campus of JacksonMemorial Medical Center is the Alamo.
Let's take a look.
might.
I might have.
Thank you, Doctor George,for joining us on on call off script.
(00:22):
It's a Jackson Health System podcast.
We are here in the Alamo the most historicbuilding that we've got on campus.
Thank you for joining us.
It's great being here.
It's exciting.
It's historic, as you've said, to really.
And your life's work is being a Miamihistorian.
That's so importantto capture this history.
How important is the buildingthat we're standing?
It is it's vital because it gives somebodywho sees it from the inside
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and outside a sense of
what medical science is like at that time,how hospitals were at that time.
I mean, this is the originalthis goes back about 110 years. Wow.
They built between 1960 and 1918.
So it's it's phenomenal to have it hereand preserved and restored restored too.
Because stepping even into this room,it kind of takes you way back in time
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to when you needed a prescription filled.
Even right behind us,you can see all the tinctures
and things that came togetherto help care for people.
Can we talk about that care processwhen people would come
into this hospital in Miami, how special.
Was that?
It was very special.
See, it's interesting. They broke ground.
They moved into the the hospital,the Alamo in June of 1918.
(01:29):
In October 1918, the so-called Spanishinfluenza epidemic caught up to Miami.
Wow. And scores of people were treatedboth within the building
and outside of the building.
Tents, for usually the processwas influenza a yellow to pneumonia
that if it wasn't treated right,that resulted in death. Wow.
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And there were scores of people who died
not just from this building here,but just in Greater Miami itself.
Right.
So the building opened upjust three months or four months before
this worst epidemic, up until the morerecent epidemic of our times.
Wow. Absolutely amazingthe timing on this thing.
You took the words out of my mouth.
Imagine how many lives in Miami were savedjust because this infrastructure,
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this building was here,and the scores of doctors and nurses
that rotated in and outto care for people, it's very important.
You're right. Scores,if not hundreds of people's lives.
The seat in the staff was so overworkedand it was just frenzied.
They had 12 hour days, 14 hour days,sometimes 24 hour days. Wow.
Because they were short of people.
There was such an emergencygoing on here, right, with this epidemic.
(02:32):
And it all started with Doctor Jackson.
Actually leads me, I want to take you
into another interesting roomthat we've got here in the Alamo.
That'll make sure to highlightthe experience
that patients went throughwhen they came into the Alamo.
All the faces,the friendly faces that they saw.
But when we go into this room, it'sgoing to take us back significantly.
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And itit leads not a lot to the curiosity. So
explain to me what we're seeing in here.
Well, you're looking at an operating roomand, you know, you got the instruments.
You got the bedding here, right?
You got different machines hereto keep people going.
It's it's an amazing room.
It's just a flashback into the past,I think, of all the advances
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we looked at in American societyand in world society.
Probably the greatest advanceshave been in the medical field.
And Jackson personifies, I'm one of the units that opened up here.
Whether it's polio treatmentor whatever it might be.
Jackson has been in the forefront of thisfor a long time.
Right. I'll starting with Doctor Jackson.
Can you tell us a little bit about himwho was very.
Interesting man born and,you know, great far north of here.
(03:36):
Bronson, Florida.
And and for a while in differentsmall towns in Florida,
at the invitation of Henry FlaglerRailroad, soon to be Empire,
he was invited to come down hereand be the railroad doctor.
And so he came to Miami at its birth.
He came to Miami in the spring of 1896.
The city was incorporated in July of 1896,and they really didn't have a hospital.
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Wow. So he took care of, FloridaEast Coast
Railway and hotelemployees, Flagler station employees.
As time wenton, the city grew very quickly.
And, you know, he said, look,we need to help a lot of other people
just besides the railroad people. Right?
He became instrumental.
And what becomes the first MiamiCity Hospital?
And it grew out of somethingthat's very interesting.
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There was a Jesuit priest at the Churchof Jesus who then called the Holy Name
Church in downtown Miami.There's still a James, are there? Yeah.
It was started 1896.
His name was father, friend.
And he his he started in 1909,a public hospital for thing.
And he called it and they called itthe friendly hospital for father friend.
(04:39):
Right.
But after a while
they just couldn't handle it, you know,the amount of people, the expenses.
And it became a little less friendly,I can imagine.
Definitely did not happen.
And it was ultimately taken overby the city. Yes.
And so it stood about where todayis, Biscayne Boulevard.
There was no boulevardat the time that North Shore Drive today,
Biscayne Boulevard and ninth StreetNortheast.
(04:59):
This is today.
And they decided by in the 19 tens,the city's growing fast.
In fact,
Miami had the highest per capita growthof any city in the country between 1910.
In 1920,a jump for 5500 daily 3000 people.
And with the traffic today, you wouldbelieve that statistic is still true.
My friends.
Yeah, it's a.
Busy. City.
Yes, it is very busy city. So.
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But they decided the city did.
And now the city's operating the hospital.
Right.
Rename it the Miami City Hospital.
We need bigger facilities.
And so they built this out in the Pineywoods to move inland in Miami.
Just a year.
You know,you got the hammock area along the bay,
a thick jungle like that is a move furtherinland is typically a piney woods.
Dade County fine.
And so you had not even had,like the cattle farms around here.
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You I cannot imagine a cowwalking down a dirt road in Miami.
Exactly.
How about going down today?So it was 1230.
Oh am I you'll see some things,but not cows. So?
So the hospital was built,over a long period of time.
Right. Well, you know,money had to be garnered for this.
Equipment had to be purchasedor what have you.
And it finally opened in June of 1980.
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And then the so-called Spanish,the flies epidemic took place.
I always had this experience.
I'm married to a Spanish woman.
She doesn't like to me,not for the fact that we call it
the Spanish influenza epidemic.
Yeah, that's a fair. That's a fair point.
So when we talk about Doctor Jackson's,tell me about the legacy
that he left as well, because there'sa lot of rumors going around right?
Some people hearand see the spirit of him walking around.
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But we do want to talk abouthis influence, right?
It was a big deal.
So he was a Renaissance person.
He founded the first really notablecivic organization,
the Rotary Club, soon before his death.
He had a hand with the moversand shakers of Miami.
You know,
he was always going aroundlooking for support
for what he was doing directlyand what have you.
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He was right there at his funeralin downtown Miami at church.
Now, 9900 people showed up. Wow.
And then the city said, in honor of this,
we're going to close the businessdistrict.
Today's downtown Detroit.
I think it was 9 a.m., 11 a.m.,the time of his services and his burial.
So that happened also.
He was buried in the Miami City Cemetery.
He is one of five generations of Florida
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born family who are physicians. Wow.
He's buried the Miami City Cemetery.
Goodness, isn't that something special?
Yeah, it really is it.
There's a lot of patients on horsebackthose days.
You go see the patient,and I suppose what's happening now?
And, he was just beloved in the community.
Yeah.
One thing that we talked abouta little bit earlier is that
one thing that he would do is see patientsin one room and maybe operate on them
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in the other, and that'skind of the infrastructure in right now.
Talk to us about that.
say something he did in his office.
Wow. His office, initially until 1916,stood at today's northeast second Avenue
and flag of Street in downtown Miamiand right behind it was his house.
Oh, and both of those objects
were moved over to southeast12th terrace in the 19 tens.
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But so he was he was all over the place.
Yeah, he was overseeing the hospitaland he was overseeing his own
private practice. Right.
Both of which dovetail the times thatyou would take somebody to the hospital.
Exactly like this.
Very busy man, an inveterate cigar smoker.
And that was sadlythe custom at that time.
I was going to say.
I mean, I hate to hear a doctor of smokingcigarets
(08:21):
and using tobacco, but I mean,that example, the more you know.
Right.
Exactly, exactly a true testamentof how technology has come a long way.
Oh, it really has.
And, you know, he started feeling ill, latent late in his life, his lifetime.
And it was a lung disease.
He had probably related to smoking.
Right.
He was,they were going to operate on him.
(08:43):
They said it's an operablethere was a tumor lung area,
and he died about a month after that.
After the diagnosis.
And so how long did it takefor us to switch over to the Jackson name?
People don't even some people don't
even realize that every daythey're speaking his spirit alive.
So interesting.You should ask that question.
He died about the 3rd of April of 1924.
(09:05):
Within about a week or two,the Miami City Commission
and rename thisJackson Memorial Hospital. Wow.
From the Miami City Hospital,the Jackson Memorial Hospital.
What a testament. A week or two, right?
I mean, come on, we know city
government moves slow, so a week or twois making something move in shape.
This is a larger than lifefigure in this community.
Absolutely.
And the fact that this buildingis standing more than 100 years later,
(09:26):
I want to take you down the hallwaybecause something that's important
for us to talk about,too, is the preservation of this building.
Yes. Right. Very, very. Important.
I think one thing that you mentioned,
Doctor George, is that this is notthe original location of the Alamo.
Has it been moved?
It it moved in the late 70s,and the word went out
that the hospital was growing so quickly.
They're going to build the East building,and they needed to knock this down.
(09:50):
Yeah.
In order to provide the space for that,at least part of the space for it.
And when word got out,this community became energized
saying, you can't do that.
Why hospital building?
So this campaign called Save the Islandmoving forward out, in the late 1970s.
And they raised money over a periodof about two years, moved the building
about 479ft, a little bit southwestto where it had been. Wow.
(10:13):
Here, in order to do that.
And then the next step,of course, was to preserve.
Right.
And that was a longer thing. You know,
you raised money and sporadicallyyou did different improvements.
But I mean, it's in great shapeconsidering its age and how heavily used
it was over the years.
And I can imagine that takes time. Right?
And I don't think enough people understand
how much it takes to physically movea building from one place to the next.
(10:34):
It's just a it's an amazing taskand it's a fairly big building.
And again, it's masonry.So it's a heavy building. Yeah.
They had rolling blocks under itand you know all sorts of things.
But it was amazingbecause the campaign was so broad based.
It was just everyday average folkswho probably had benefited from something
Jackson had done for them. Yeah.And many of them. Saint Louis.
(10:55):
I actually got treated in this buildingonce upon a time.
So I don't want to see this thinggo down. Yeah.
And they were able to save it.It's a huge example.
One of the first examples we ever hadof a story preservation in this area.
I was going to askif I was going to be my next question.
Is this. A city that just reinvents itselfall. The time? It really does.
Skylines the third densest in the country,you know.
Oh my goodness.
You know what?
I would believe it, Doctor George, it'sso special that they rallied together
(11:17):
strangers, nurses, doctors
to make sure that infrastructurelike this has lasted the test of time.
And when you look around, yes,some of the things are older than others,
but it fits in placewith the culture of Miami,
with the archwaysand the beauty of this building.
It it's it's the Mediterranean style.
And this really pre-datessomething that happened
in the mid 20s, in the mid 20s, greaterMiami, you get this real estate boom years
(11:40):
as the boom.
And the dominant style of architecturewas the Mediterranean style.
This building predates the boom by almostten years.
Wow. Ahead of the.
Time, yes, with the same architecture,which is so interesting.
It really is.
When we look around the Alamo, we can see,we can smell.
We can read all of the historythat's within these walls.
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What's something that importantthat people really need to take away
from the fact that this buildingis still here?
Well, a it's so solid.
The it's got the Mediterranean archesexterior is just gorgeous.
A lot of it.
They have lots of designby probably the preeminent architect
of that time, a man in August.
Geiger did a lot of money. Beach. Yeah.
And he already introduceda sort of Mediterranean style in 1910.
(12:22):
So nobody else is doing this? Yeah.
I love the tray as a floor.
I mean, it's way ahead of its time.
You go to North and SouthBeach on Ocean Drive.
You'll see these.
Absolutely. Here it is. It's great.
It really is.
So it's it's a building ahead of its time.
And of course in the way people weretreated here, it's way ahead of its time.
It's great treatment.
And hopefully we can make sureto keep Doctor Jackson's legacy alive,
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and making sure
we preserve the important momentsin Jackson Health Systems history.
Absolutely.thank you, Doctor George, for your time.
Thank you. I feel
And after more than 100 years, the Alamostill stands to tell its history.
Thank you for watching. On call offscript.
Make sure to stay tunedfor our next episode
and follow us on our social mediaaccounts at Jackson Health,