When Philip Pizzo, MD, came to interview for the position of dean of Stanford's medical school in 2000 he stayed in a nearby hotel. Taking a cab each day to campus for interviews, Pizzo would ask the driver to take him to the School of Medicine. Not one driver knew where to go, recounted Drew Bourn, PhD, while leading a recent architectural tour of the School of Medicine.
At the time the dean's office was buried in a courtyard of the Stone Building and hidden from street view. But now the medical school has a face, the stately Li Ka Shing Center for Learning and Knowledge, which will soon have a twin to the east. Within a decade or so, a new, matching building will replace the research building currently beside it.
This was just one of the many stories Bourn shared about the first medical school on the West Coast, which has its roots in Illinois, where physician Elias Samuel Cooper, MD, diced up cadavers of executed criminals to teach surgery.
The Gold Rush brought him west, and soon the Cooper Medical College sprouted up in San Francisco, before aligning with Stanford and moving south to the Farm in the 1950s.
Its first building was the current hospital, known as the Stone Building not for its construction material, but for its architect, Edward Durrell Stone, a famous midcentury architect who designed Radio City Music Hall, among many other national and international works.
Lest I steal all of Bourn's best bits — including how Stone met an Italian fashion writer on a plane, and before landing convinced her to marry him — I'll leave it to you to enjoy the experience on your own. Local readers: Bourn offers tours regularly — the next is Nov. 12 at 2 PM — free and open to all. All who want to spend an enjoyable hour learning, that is.
For more fun photos, check out the Stanford History Medical Center's Flickr collection.
Previously: Stanford building houses one of the world's largest medical simulation facilities, Stanford's Clark Center, home to Bio-X, turns 10 and A new era in education at Stanford's Medical School
Photos from Stanford History Medical Center
