Establishment and early years Established as Emanuel Hospital in 1912 and started by Reverend Carl J. Renhard of First Immanuel
Lutheran Church in Portland. A misspelling of the name 'Immanuel' occurred and was not discovered until all official documents had been signed as 'Emanuel'. The decision was to retain the 'official' name even though misspelled. The first location of the hospital was a three-story
Victorian home on Southwest Taylor Street, nicknamed the "Gingerbread House" by local residents for its appearance. In 1913, a nursing school was founded at the hospital under the supervision of Lutheran
nun Sister Betty Hanson, In December 1915, the hospital moved to a new building it constructed for $20,000 at Stanton and Commercial Streets in
Albina, its current location. At that time it had 135 beds. Emanuel added a new, four-story nursing school residence in 1921 at a cost of $60,000. A $264,723 new hospital building opened in February 1926; the old building was subsequently converted to a
maternity ward, which was overseen by Alice Swanman, a nurse who was a member of the hospital's second graduating class. Per a 1970 report, the hospital had one of the largest
obstetrics practices in the Pacific Northwest, with 3,650 births taking place in the hospital that year. In 1962, the
Portland Development Commission began a study for
urban renewal with Emanuel, but without informing the residents until 1970, when PDC received a federal grant to condemn and clear 55 acres of supposedly blighted property. Emanuel canceled its development in 1973, but PDC sold the remaining property to Emanuel in 1980 with a 10-year timeline for its use. Fifty years after the demolition began, many of those blocks are still unused, a "visible reminder of urban neglect, broken promises and a decades-long failure of leadership" by PDC and Emanuel, and despite wiping away a key Black commercial center. Legacy Emanuel formally apologized in 2012.
1972 expansion through present In 1971, Physicians & Surgeons Hospital and Emanuel formed Metropolitan Hospitals, Inc. as a joint venture to build what became
Legacy Meridian Park Hospital. In 1972, the hospital was expanded, and in the process 300 homes and businesses in the predominantly African-American
Albina neighborhood were razed to make room for construction. In 1978, the hospital opened a helipad, and instituted the
Life Flight Network, the first life-flight system on the U.S.
West Coast. At that time the group operated Emanuel,
Mount Hood Medical Center, Meridian Park,
Holladay Park Medical Center, and Physicians & Surgeons Hospital. ==Facilities==