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Originally Posted by Godzilla
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The pictures of the Fairfax/Olympic/San Vicente intersection were of interest to me, as my office is very close by. I am on the medical staff of Olympia Medical Center, formerly Midway Hospital.
MH was founded in 1947 by two anesthesiologists, Dr. Leon Tiber and Dr. David Alpert. They chose the name because it was half-way (more or less) between Downtown and the ocean. At the time, it was impossible for Jewish physicians to join the medical staff of any hospital except the Jewish ones: Cedars of Lebanon, and Mt. Sinai, and getting on those was highly competitive. Drs. Tiber and Alpert decided open a 28-bed hospital which was to be open to any qualified physician to join the medical staff. The hospital expanded over the years and went through a series of owners. It is currently operated by Alecto Healthcare LLC.
If you drive by it, you will see that the original main entrance was meant to be off San Vicente. But when the hospital was renamed "Olympia," the marketing people wanted the entrance to be on Olympic Boulevard even though the view from Olympic was not exactly glamorous.
The Shalhevet (="flame" in Hebrew) School is an orthodox Jewish co-ed high school opened in 1992 at the former Westside Hospital (910 S. Fairfax, WEbster 8-3431). Westside Hospital was interesting for two reasons: Marilyn Monroe was hospitalized there for "exhaustion" during the filming of "The Misfits"; and it was the first example of a laboratory/services company acquiring hospitals and running them as if they were franchise restaurants. This was done by "American Laboratories Inc" at the direction of its owner, who rejoiced in the name Uranus J. Appel. His first two hospitals were Westside, and Westlake Hospital (644 S. Alvarado, now a Yoshinoya Beef Bowl).