Miranda Pederson/Daily News

When Carrel Sumner came from Greenville in 1957, the Bowling Green-Warren County Hospital looked big. But the three-story red-brick building atop Reservoir Hill, which had already undergone one major expansion from its original 35 beds, would keep growing until it became The Medical Center, with its 330 beds now several blocks away from the hilltop. One of the things we experienced practically every day was having patients in the corridors, Sumner said of the old building. We would put screens around them and get them into rooms as soon as possible, but we turned nobody away. Sumner, now a vice president of Commonwealth Health Corp. (which runs The Medical Center), began his career in health care as a hospital orderly. Started to work and to Western on the same day, Sumner said. Five years after graduation, he returned in 1967 as business office manager, and has been there ever since. The memories I have are very pleasant ones, he said. I found the people to be very friendly and very welcoming to me. At the time, you knew everybodys cars. You could look in the parking lot and say who was there. More than half of Sumners career has been spent in the old hospital building, where he worked in the emergency room, and surgery, and X-ray, and pretty much every other department. In those days we worked 48 hours a week, Sumner said. We saw all kinds of things: car wrecks, everything that the emergency room gets today, we got then. Anna Lewis, R.N., spent the first third of her career at the old building. She finished nursing school 34 years ago. I graduated on a Saturday and started work on Monday, Lewis said. The old buildings rooms were arranged along one long hallway, so Lewis had to pass through various departments to get from pediatrics to most other locations, she said. As a night-shift pediatric nurse, she met and made friends with people from many specialties; most of those people are now retired, she said. It was kind of a family-like atmosphere, Lewis said. Everyone knew each other. The old hospital, which now houses various CHC offices, was designed by local architect R.E. Turbeville, and built in 1926. The three-story red brick building had 35 beds at opening, according to Doris Thomas, vice president of marketing for CHC. Its construction cost was $130,000.It contained two operating rooms; a small kitchen on each floor connected to the main cooking area in the basement, which also housed the laundry; maternity and X-ray departments on the top floor; and an eye, ear, nose and throat clinic on the first floor. I talk to an awful lot of people who say, My child was born there, Sumner said. As was almost every hospital at the time, rooms were segregated by race, and paying patients were separated from non-paying patients, Thomas said. In 1946 the building was expanded to 125 beds. At that time the name changed to the Bowling Green-Warren County Hospital, Thomas said. Prior to that it was called City Hospital. The name changed because Warren County donated the land for the expansion. Behind the hospital stood a house for nurses use, which was torn down in 1950, she said. As Bowling Green and Warren County grew, the hospital steadily expanded. In 1962 new offices and lobby, a coffee shop, prayer and conference rooms, three nursing units and a classroom were added, Thomas said. The coronary care unit opened in 1969, and in 1971 the hospital took over ambulance service from local funeral directors. More offices and 80 long-term care beds, an enlarged lab and physical therapy clinic came in 1972, and an intensive care unit in 1973, she said. By 1975, it was clear the hospital needed still more room. So new Hospital Administrator John Desmarais formed an advisory group to look for a new site. Desmarais is still president and CEO of CHC, which formed to manage The Medical Center and related institutions in a 1984 reorganization. The hospital changed from a public institution to a private nonprofit, no longer supported by taxes, Thomas said. The Bowling Green-Warren County Hospital Corp. formed in 1977 to run the existing hospital and build a new one. When the new hospital was being designed, planners made sure to enlarge patient rooms, give more privacy and include enough bathrooms, Sumner said. Lewis said that new rooms were arranged for quiet and patient comfort, a considerable improvement over the old building. In March 1980, The Medical Center opened in its current location, a few blocks from its historic home. We made the smoothest move you ever saw in your life, Lewis said. We started early one morning and we were finished by a little after noon. Kept intact in the move was the hospitals mission, Thomas said. The names have changed, but the goals and objectives of the hospital have not changed since 1926, she said.