St Margaret’s as It Existed in 1978, in a View Taken From the RSA Headquarters Building Under Construction at That Time.

Months before Klein and PH&J were even introduced and interviewed, Sister Susan and her Order had employed the Pearce Corporation of St. Louis to design and construct a physician’s office building (POB) and parking deck.  We were well into our design process for the hospital before we even knew that the POB and deck were being planned.

The Pearce group had to answer to almost no one and meet no criteria, so you should not be surprised that the character of the POB is totally at odds with the existing hospital and with the new parts that Klein was designing.  What you probably don’t know is the absurdity of the connection to the hospital from the parking deck and POB as was proposed by the Pearce designers.

Early in 1977, the Klein/PH&J joint venture was designing the main hospital entrance as an entry to the hospital’s first floor.  Problem was, Pearce was constructing the deck to enter on the hospital’s second floor.  We found this out by observing the POB construction.  You can only imagine the confusion and lack of control and security that would result if we brought those two major streams of traffic into a major hospital on different levels.

After weeks of debate, we finally were able to prevail on the issue and change orders were issued on the Pearce job to lower their entry path to the main floor level.

-Charles Humphries (“Peril and Intrigue Within Architecture”)

This is one of many St. Margaret stories. The rest can be found here.