Aerial View of Buildings
We came across this aerial image of a group of buildings, but no title or caption was given. Can you please help us identify these buildings and area?
What city are these buildings located in? What are the names of these buildings or the street?
What purpose did these buildings serve? Were they businesses, apartments, hotels, etc?
Have you ever visited this area? If so, please share with us your stories about this location.
If you have any more information about this aerial image, please share with us in the comments section!
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William McLaughlin
These buildings are Gorgas Hospital in Ancon, Canal Zone. The red roof buildings are the original and the larger square building was added on later.
I and many Zonians were born in this hospital
Joe Wood
A full history of Gorgas Hospital is contained at this link:
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/pnp/habshaer/cz/cz0000/cz0018/data/cz0018data.pdf
The document was compiled by the National Park Service, Department of the Interior, as part of its Historic Buildings Survey. Prior to the assumption of its operation by the Department of Defense on October 1, 1979, the hospital was operated by the Panama Canal and Canal Zone Government. It was known as Ancon Hospital until it was renamed in memory of Major General William Crawford Gorgas by joint resolution of the United States Congress in March of 1928.
My wife and our three children were born there.
Carol Meyer
That is my favorite photo of Gorgas Hospital as it pretty much show the whole complex. Not only did the Army change the name to Gorgas Army Hospital but later, a new commander changed it to Gorgas Army Community Hospital! As the name became longer the services and patient load decreased. The facility was closed for a few years after handed over to Panama but then they had an accident at the Social Security Hospital and couldn’t usentheir operating rooms so they started doing surgeries at Gorgas. Following this it became the Oncology hospital, using only the new hospital building. The pylon at the bottom of photo new hospital is part of a seismic strengthening project as there was some damage above the 4th floor after an earthquake. Cables were strung through the fourth floor from that pylon to a matching pylon on the opposite side. This made the upper stories of the hospital resting on a hammock like structure The Administration Bldg. And Section A house the Public Health offices. Two old ward buildings which were changed to air conditioned apartments for staff and I lived in one of these for several years. I did a year of residency there and was on staff for 17 years in pediatrics and allergy/immunology/ rheumatology.
Cecilia Wright
Carol you forgot to say the Eng incharged was Jimmy Lakas before he was president of Panama.
Kathy Egolf
My mother was born there in 1915, when it was Ancon Hospital. In the 1920’s the name was changed to Gorgas Hospital, and my brother and I were born there in the 40’s. When I was about 4, I had my tonsils removed in the building in the upper right hand corner, and in the 70’s I lived there for a few years after it was converted to apartments for PCC/CZG employees. It was at this time that bachelors were first allowed to live in two-bedroom quarters.
Ralph Edmondson, BHS 1961
The buildings make up the Gorgas Hospital complex, which was/is located on the slope of Ancon Hill in the town of Ancon. Note: The green jungle shown in the upper left part of the photo is the side of Ancon Hill as it rises up in elevation. The street running along the right side of the complex, lined with tall Royal Palm Trees, as it works its way up Ancon Hill, is Gorgas Road.
The white buildings with red, barrel-tile roofs are the old Gorgas Hospital complex. It was built on the site of the original French, wooden-structures, hospital named L’Hospital Notre Dame de Canal. Later the Americans renamed it Ancon Hospital. Sometime around 1915 – 1916 the Americans began replacing the old wooden French buildings using white concrete buildings with red, barrel-tiled roofs. In 1928 Ancon Hospital was renamed Gorgas Hospital. Around 1961 construction began on the modern buildings with grey and white roof and sides, located below the older buildings, as an expansion and modernization of the Gorgas Hospital complex.
In the Canal Zone, in the 1930’s, 40’s, 50’s, and early 60’s, there were no individual doctors that had their own ‘private’ practices. All Canal Zone doctors worked out of the Gorgas Hospital. The exception was the dentists. Several dentists had their own private practices in other buildings within the communities.
If you were sick or injured you went to Gorgas Hospital. It served the civilian residents of the Ancon and Balboa communities and pretty much everyone else that lived in other civilian neighborhoods on the ‘Pacific Side’ of the Panama Canal Zone. It also served military cases if needed. Most military bases had their own clinics or hospitals.
However, if you wanted to see a ‘specialist’ that practiced in the city of Panama, you could go to their office in the City of Panama. Most of us that were ‘born and raised’ on the Pacific side during those years were born in Gorgas Hospital.
As my older brother and I grew up in Ancon, we kept Gorgas Hospital ‘in business’. We survived broken arms, dislocated shoulders, fractured knees and cracked kneecaps, cracked skulls, dog bites, sore throats, colds, measles, mumps, and every other ailment young boys growing up in the Tropics could get. We were treated and repaired by the wonderful doctors and nurses in those white concrete, red, barrel-tiled roofed buildings that made up Gorgas Hospital.
In the summer of 1961, after graduating from Balboa High School (Class of 1961), I had a ‘summer job’ working for the earth and concrete contractor that was preparing the site for the new, modern, flat-roofed, grey and white annex that is located below the older buildings. The photo does not clearly show the difference in elevation between the older buildings and the newer annex. The older, white, concrete buildings with red roofs are higher up Ancon Hill than the newer annex. The green grassed area between the new annex and the older red-tiled buildings was/is a fairly steep slope down to the newer annex.
A large portion of that slope had to be cut back, excavated, and rebuilt with a huge retaining wall to keep the hill above from sliding down into the new annex section. Then, the large concrete foundation of the new annex was built.
At 17 years of age I worked for two months digging dirt. We dug, by hand with pick and shovel, the trenches that became the base of the retaining wall for the annex buildings. WHEW!!
It was that summer job that made me realize I would never be able to make a living with my ‘brawn’ so I’d better use my ‘brains’ and get a college education. If I could, I would hug that contractor and thank him for the summer job that made me ‘see the light’ and changed my future.
Bob Dillon
I loved the way you’d take the walkway across the street from the 2nd floor of one building, and be in the basement of another building. Traverse through the subterranean basement tunnel, then across a walkway to the 3rd floor of another building. The style and architecture of the buildings was the finest. I miss those old buildings.
Does anyone know if Colonel Gorgas actually worked in the new (100 years ago concrete) hospital, or only the old wooden french buildings? I read somewhere that when it was built (the concrete hospital), it was the largest hospital south of the U.S. border. Note that in the picture above, you really don’t see all the buildings as they continue out of frame to the right.
I worked one summer (’84 student-hire) in the office with the balcony, beneath the bell towers (top center photo). The hospital was run by the Army at the time, and MEDIVAC helicopter pilots would come and go into our office from exotic places like Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras, etcetera. Remember Reagan, Sandanistas and Contras? Fortunately for me, I had no security clearance so I have no Idea what they did, other than it was cool.
I always wondered who’s balcony that was (Maybe Gorgas himself?).
Jo
In the upper right of the photo, the long stretch of the hospital to the right of the huge arches was converted into apartments. I moved there in 1971. My apartment was pie-shaped, directly beside the squared center. The 1973 earth tremors really shook the 3rd floor, and it seemed a long way down to the ground while running unbalanced. Across the street from my apartment was the mortuary and down the hill was Ancon Elementary, but neither is visible in the photo.
When the buildings were given to Panama, the apartments were converted into Panama Judicial Offices and Courts.
Chris Maggio
My little brother was born there! I was furious! It meant I had to share my room… haha turns out he’s not so bad.