Then and Now

‘Then and Now’: Geary Boulevard Between Fifth and Sixth Aves.

Above: French Hospital in 1895. The hospital was on Point Lobos Toll Road (today’s Geary Boulevard) between Fifth and Sixth avenues. Photo courtesy of a private collector/Western Neighborhoods Project/OpenSFHistory.

Below: Members of Kaiser Permanente’s health plan may have wondered why the medical office building on Geary was named the French campus. The old hospital was founded in 1851 by the Societe Francaise de Bienfaisance Mutuelle, and Kaiser kept the French reference. Photo by Michael Durand.

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  1. Yes, I remember the French Hospital very well. My mom worked there from the late 1950s-mid 1960s. I will always remember it as a quaint, large but very friendly facility. As a child it was my first real experience with a medical facility of any sort. As I grew older it became the measuring stick I used to judge the friendliness and warmth of other medical facilities and hospitals. Yeah, kind of a funny thing to do but that’s how much the French Hospital impressed me as a child.

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