Valley Medical Center

Sal is a voice that rides along as you drive Washington's roads: the road ahead, the pass, the stories of the places you pass.

The hospital started as Renton Hospital in 1945, built by the Federal Works Agency to add medical capacity for a town that had outgrown its old hospital. Seattle architect George W. Stoddard laid it out like a wagon wheel, seven wings branching off a center, a design meant to spread out the impact of a bombing. It later got in the way of patient care. Two years in, a public hospital district took over operation. In 1969 the hospital moved to a twenty-five-acre campus overlooking State Route 167, designed by Edward Durell Stone, with four wings and single rooms that each had a deck or patio. The old Renton site holds a hardware store these days. The Valley Medical Center name came in 1984. [1]