Hospitals of Wayne

Carpenter Hospital, Biddle Street.

You might be surprised to learn that Wayne did not have a hospital per-se until well into the 1900s. The first doctor in Wayne was Julius M. Hume, who came to town in 1832. Back then doctors would make house calls to care for the sick and injured, or if they had space, might set you up in their own house for care.
After the civil war doctors became more numerous in Wayne as the profession shifted to requiring a college degree. Many of the doctors in the later 1800s were also civil war veterans, such as Dr. Alexander Collar, and Dr. E.O. Bennett.
In this time there were still no hospitals, but some doctors had small offices above shops in town or had a side room on their house with a separate door for patients. One other option was to rent a hotel room and see patients out of it, as an 1884 ad for Dr. Bennett reads ” Have you forgotten that Dr. Bennett is in the Tremont House Hotel every 4 weeks curing all difficulties”. (The Tremont is the building at the NW corner of Michigan and Wayne Road; it was formerly a hotel).
In 1931 Carpenter Hospital opened as Wayne’s first real hospital in an old, remodeled house on Biddle Street. It had 15 beds, an operating room and an x-ray room. Run by Dr. Clarence Carpenter, the hospital was much beloved and expanded several times.
Many Wayne residents remember going to Dr. Carpenter or were born in his little hospital. In the 1960s Urban Renewal took the original building down, and Carpenter tried to move. He began construction on the MPC building at 2nd street to be his new hospital, but he ran out of money, gave up and retired to his animal farm on Van Born Road.
Nankin Hospital opened just a year after Carpenter Hospital, in a brand-new purpose-built building on Michigan at Sophia. This handsome colonial style building had all the modern conveniences and was state of the art with a laboratory, pharmacy and several specialty treatment rooms. It was built by Dr. Reginald Huff and Dr. James Caraway for their joint practice.
By the 1970s it was owned by Dr. Archambault and care standards had declined rapidly. The city and health department closed it, and the doctor turned it into apartments. After sitting vacant for a few years, the building burned down in 2004 and is a parking lot today.
Parker-Vincent hospital was located in a remodeled old house on Wayne Road, about where the Congregational Church sits today. It was run by Dr. James Vincent and Dr. Albert Parker and opened in the 1930s. It was the smallest of the private hospitals, and Dr. Parker ran it right up into the 1960s when the building was taken for Urban Renewal. Dr. Parker also had his home confiscated for Urban Renewal, the stress of which caused a heart attack and he died in 1966.
Interestingly, in these days ambulance service was provided by Uhts and Lents funeral homes. By the 1950s and 60s small privately run hospitals like Wayne had been under pressure from new state and federal laws for patient care and medical certifications and licenses.
Private insurance was on the rise, and Medicare and Medicaid added new difficulties. In late 1957 a new large modern hospital would open at Venoy and Annapolis, called Annapolis Hospital.
This new 122 bed facility would be top of the line for the day, with TV’s in patient rooms and all electric appliances. The hospital was built by the Peoples Community Hospital Authority, a group which ran 4 local hospitals for 19 communities. Annapolis has of course been expanded several times and remains the only hospital in Wayne today.