Overlay — The Landscape is Morphing, but The Purpose is the Same

Overlay — Blending the Old with the New

What do you get when you overlay a September 27, 2018, photo over a 2004 photo (approximate date)? The angle is close, the distance, however, is somewhat varied. Both photographs were taken at night, the 2004 photo was taken horizontally while the current photo was taken vertically. From the position of the setting sun, the 2004 photo like the current photo must have been taken in the early fall for the Christmas lights were not lit. In the photo of 2004, cars were coming and going along Medical Center Drive off of Anderson Street. In the most recent photo, the tracks of a mammoth crawler crane rest on what was Medical Center Drive. To the left of the crane is the steel of a new hospital, which already has eclipsed, in height, the existing Medical Center towers. Gone are the palm trees. The current Children’s Hospital is now obscured by the steel frame of the podium for the Adult Hospital tower. The glorious glow from the winter sunsets, enjoyed by the office tenants just east of the new towers will be but a memory. The new and most recent photo shows a prefab curtain wall being lowered into place on the north side of the steel structure, near the main entrance to the Medical Center. The Building is not a Steel Skeleton Anymore. Times are a-changin’!

A horizontal view of the Medical Center and Children’s Hospital complex circa 2004.

A vertical view of the changing face of the Medical Center. The cloverleaf tower in the background oversees the activity as the crane lowers a prefab curtain wall into place. Times are a-changin’!

The above artist rendering of the current Loma Linda University Hospital (now known as the Loma Linda University Medical Center) is a representation of a postcard that my wife found in her late mothers keepsakes. There was no date on the postcard, however, it is thought that the postcard was produced sometime after the completion of the hospital in that the caption was written in the present tense. Why an artist rendering rather than a photo on a postcard? The completed structure and its campus environs was rather stark compared to the artist rendering.

Many of the same words in the caption (only in the future tense) of a half-century ago could be used for the new Children’s and Adult Hospital that is now under construction just yards east of the “Three circular, 11-story towers.”

Loma Linda University, Loma Linda, California — The new Loma Linda University $1.4-billion Hospitals containing just under 1-million square feet will provide technological advanced facilities for programs of education, research, and service(s) in  all of the medical sciences. Two rectangle towers will become the dominant features overshadowing the existing Medical Center and Children’s Hospitals. The new Children’s Hospital tower will rise 11-stories, and the Adult Hospital will rise 18-stories. Two of the stories for each of the hospitals are underground with the basement level housing the seismic base isolators and dampers. When the two hospitals become operational (after several months of licensing) in the summer of 2021, the Adult Hospital will have an initial 288 licensed beds increasing up to approximately 320 beds. The future capacity of the Children’s Hospital will be an approximate 377 licensed beds after initially starting out with 349 licensed beds.