Swedish American: The Hospital That Began With One Dollar

 Swedish American: The Hospital That Began With One Dollar

Generations of Rockford residents have been born at SwedishAmerican Hospital, worked there, recovered there, and said goodbye to loved ones there. Its history is inseparable from the history of the city itself.

But SwedishAmerican began with something considerably smaller than a hospital: a single dollar enclosed in a letter to a Swedish-language newspaper.

SwedishAmerican Hospital in 2007. Photograph by IvoShandor

The Hospital That Began With One Dollar

On March 23, 1911, a Rockford mathematician named O. F. Nilson wrote a letter to Carl Hjalmar Lundquist, editor of the Swedish-language newspaper Svenska Posten.

Nilson believed Rockford needed a hospital established by its Swedish community. He proposed that every Swedish resident contribute one dollar a year toward the project. To demonstrate his commitment, he enclosed a dollar of his own.

Lundquist deposited the money at the Swedish-American National Bank and called a meeting of Swedish ministers to discuss the proposal.

From that single dollar, a hospital began to take shape.

On June 6, 1911, the Swedish-American Hospital Association received its charter from the State of Illinois.

Fundraising became a community undertaking. Letters circulated in Swedish and English, and residents organized picnics, bazaars, and concerts. By May 1912, the association had collected more than $4,000 in cash and secured another $8,000 in pledges.

A three-acre site on Charles Street was purchased for $11,500.

July 18, 1918: The First Patient

After seven years of organizing, fundraising, and construction, SwedishAmerican Hospital was completed on July 17, 1918.

The original building cost approximately $175,000 and contained 55 beds.

The following day, July 18, the hospital admitted its first patient, Mrs. J. G. Prowd. She underwent surgery and remained hospitalized for 11 days. Her bill came to $40.

On August 29, 1918, Clarence Pearson became the first baby born at SwedishAmerican.

Healthcare looked considerably different in those days. Antibiotics were not yet available. Pneumonia and other infectious diseases remained major threats. Private rooms with a bath cost approximately six dollars a day, and nurses at the top of the salary scale earned about $60 a month.

Within weeks of opening, the hospital would face an extraordinary test.

The Influenza Epidemic of 1918

In September 1918, the influenza pandemic struck Camp Grant, the enormous military training installation south of Rockford.

The outbreak spread rapidly through the camp and the surrounding community. Midway Village Museum's historical timeline records 323 civilian influenza deaths in Rockford.

SwedishAmerican had been open for only two months.

Its physicians and nurses were confronting a public health emergency at a time when effective treatments for many serious infections were extremely limited.

The epidemic demonstrated just how important additional hospital facilities had become to Rockford.

A School for Nurses and a Growing Hospital

SwedishAmerican established its nursing school in 1919, just one year after opening. Its first students graduated in 1922.

The school helped train generations of nurses who would serve Rockford and the surrounding region.

By the late 1930s, SwedishAmerican had become an established part of Rockford's medical and civic life.

In July 1938, the hospital celebrated its twentieth anniversary with a visit from Prince Bertil of Sweden, the son of Crown Prince Gustaf Adolf.

Approximately 6,000 people gathered on the hospital lawn for the occasion.

For Rockford's Swedish-American community, the celebration marked how far the institution had come since Nilson mailed his dollar to the local newspaper.

Pehr August Peterson and the Hospital's Swedish Roots

The Lake–Peterson House, photographed in 2013. The house was owned by hospital co-founder Pehr August Peterson and later donated to SwedishAmerican. 

One of the important figures in the hospital's early development was Pehr August Peterson, a Swedish immigrant who became a prominent Rockford furniture manufacturer and civic leader.

Peterson served as chairman of the hospital's board of trustees when the institution opened in 1918.

His former residence, the Lake–Peterson House, remains an architectural reminder of the city's Swedish-American history.

Originally constructed in 1873, the house was purchased by Peterson in 1918 and donated to the hospital in 1919. It later served as a residence for students in the hospital's School of Medical Technology.

Expansion, Heart Surgery, and a Changing Neighborhood

As Rockford grew, SwedishAmerican grew with it.

A west-wing addition completed in 1942 increased capacity to approximately 125 beds. Construction began on a five-story east wing in 1947, followed by a ten-story addition in 1963.

The hospital also expanded its medical capabilities. Open-heart surgery was introduced in 1971, and a regional cancer center followed in 1974. A modern emergency facility opened in 1979.

SwedishAmerican Hospital in 2012. Photograph by Jim Simonson

During the 1990s, SwedishAmerican began planning a major modernization of its campus. The project included rerouting Charles Street, which ran through the hospital complex.

The city agreed to the changes on the condition that SwedishAmerican help revitalize the neighborhood south of the hospital.

The hospital acquired 31 properties in a six-block area and committed $2 million to neighborhood improvements. Working with the city and Habitat for Humanity, it helped bring new housing to the area.

In June 2006, SwedishAmerican opened a $44 million, 94-bed heart hospital, further expanding its cardiovascular services.

From SwedishAmerican to UW Health

In 2015, SwedishAmerican joined UW Health, the academic health system based in Madison, Wisconsin.

The partnership connected Rockford patients with a broader network of medical specialists and services while retaining the hospital's presence in northern Illinois.

In September 2021, SwedishAmerican Health System announced that it would adopt the UW Health brand.

The original Rockford hospital retained its historic identity in its new name: UW Health SwedishAmerican Hospital.

The hospital remains at 1401 East State Street, continuing to serve patients throughout northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin.

The Dollar That Became a Hospital

It is difficult to imagine that a hospital of this size began with a single dollar enclosed in a letter to a Swedish-language newspaper.

But that is precisely how SwedishAmerican's story began.

The institution has changed enormously since 1918. Buildings have been added, medical treatments have advanced, and the hospital has become part of a much larger healthcare organization.

Yet the story of its founding remains distinctly Rockford: a community recognized a need, organized its resources, and built something intended to serve generations beyond its own.

O. F. Nilson's dollar did not build a hospital by itself.

It persuaded other people to contribute theirs.

And on February 7, 1969, one of the babies born at SwedishAmerican Hospital was me.

— Thomas L. Vaultonburg

 

Charlotte’s Web: The Rockford Music Venue That Once Housed the City’s First Jewish Congregation

Rockford History | Music, architecture, and a vanished cultural landmark

There was a time when some of the most interesting music in Rockford could be heard inside an old church at 728 First Avenue. The building was home to Charlotte’s Web, a music venue that brought nationally known performers and local audiences together in an intimate setting.

But the history of Charlotte’s Web began nearly a century before its first concert.

Before it became a music venue, the building had served as a Swedish Methodist church and, later, as a synagogue for Rockford’s first Jewish congregation. Its history tells a story about immigration, religion, music, and the changing cultural life of the city.

From Swedish church to Jewish synagogue

The building that would eventually become Charlotte’s Web was erected in 1877 for a Swedish Methodist congregation. According to the Rockford Historical Society, the congregation later became known as Bethany Swedish Methodist Episcopal Church and constructed a new sanctuary at 402 Eighth Street.

Rockford’s Jewish community was also establishing its place in the growing city.

In 1898, the congregation Ohave Sholon was formed. Ten years later, in 1908, it purchased the former church building at 728 First Avenue for use as a synagogue.

This distinction is important: the building was not constructed as Rockford’s first synagogue, but it became a place of worship for the city’s first Jewish congregation.

For decades, the building's purpose was religious. Eventually, however, it would become a gathering place for an entirely different community.

The birth of Charlotte’s Web

In 1972, Karen Howard and Stephen Powers opened Charlotte’s Web in downtown Rockford. The venue became associated with folk music and a commitment to bringing a wide variety of performers to the city.

Charlotte’s Web was not simply another nightclub. Its programming encompassed folk, blues, roots music, and artists whose work did not always fit neatly into commercial categories.

The former house of worship offered something that larger concert halls could not easily reproduce: the experience of hearing a performer in a relatively intimate space.

For Rockford audiences, it meant that nationally recognized musicians could appear in a setting where the distance between artist and listener was unusually small.

The musicians who came to Rockford

                          

                          

                          

The list of performers associated with Charlotte’s Web demonstrates just how adventurous its programming could be.

Concert records document appearances by Cheap Trick in 1974, John Hartford and the Runaways in 1976, Asleep at the Wheel in 1979, and Loudon Wainwright III in 1980.

These were musicians from strikingly different traditions. Hartford was associated with bluegrass and American roots music. The Runaways were a young, all-female rock band. Cheap Trick was developing the sound that would eventually make the Rockford group internationally famous.

The variety was part of what made Charlotte’s Web distinctive. A listener might encounter a folk singer, a blues musician, or a rock band in the same room.

For a city better known nationally for manufacturing than for its music scene, Charlotte’s Web helped create a place where audiences could experience a much wider musical world.

Karen Howard and the people behind the music

Charlotte’s Web was also the product of sustained personal commitment.

Karen Howard led the organization for much of its existence. Her daughter, Lani Richardson, eventually succeeded her as executive director.

By 2012, Charlotte’s Web had operated independently for more than 40 years. That September, Northern Public Radio reported that the organization was becoming a division of the Mendelssohn Performing Arts Center.

Richardson explained that the partnership would help preserve Charlotte’s Web without requiring her family to continue handling nearly every aspect of its operations.

The arrangement represented another chapter in the organization’s history. Charlotte’s Web had grown beyond the old building on First Avenue, but its mission of bringing music to Rockford continued.

The building disappears

The original Charlotte’s Web building did not survive.

A November 10, 2019, account documented its demolition, including photographs of the former venue at 728 First Avenue.

With its disappearance, Rockford lost a building that had served several generations of residents in very different ways.

It had been a Swedish Methodist church, a synagogue, and a music venue. Each community had found its own reasons to gather there.

The history of the building also illustrates something easily overlooked about Rockford: its cultural life has always been shaped by people who created institutions for themselves, often adapting existing spaces to new purposes.

A building with more than one life

The story of Charlotte’s Web is about more than the famous musicians who performed there.

It is also the story of a Swedish immigrant congregation that built a church in the nineteenth century, a Jewish community that established a permanent place of worship in the early twentieth century, and a group of music lovers who transformed that same space into a gathering place for artists and audiences.

The building at 728 First Avenue is gone, but the history of what happened inside it remains part of Rockford’s story.

For a time, one old church held several different versions of the city’s cultural life.

And for those who remember Charlotte’s Web, the music is still there.

Is This Really the Oldest House in Rockford?

 

Is This Really the Oldest House in Rockford?

There is an old stone house at 2127 Broadway that looks as if Rockford grew around it and forgot to explain itself.

Known as the Herrick-Logli Cobblestone House, it was built in 1847 by Elijah L. Herrick. It has frequently been described as the oldest surviving house in Rockford. That claim has been repeated so often that it has nearly hardened into fact—much like the house itself—but the City of Rockford now uses the more cautious description “one of the oldest surviving buildings in Rockford.”

That leaves us with a small but irresistible local mystery.

Is it actually the oldest house in Rockford?

Before trying to settle that question, the house deserves attention on its own merits. It is one of only a few surviving cobblestone houses in Illinois and an unusually intact example of a building tradition brought west from New York State. Cobblestone construction became particularly associated with communities near the Erie Canal, where thousands of rounded stones excavated during construction were readily available and skilled masons developed elaborate ways of arranging them.

Elijah Herrick came to Rockford from Massachusetts during the mid-1830s. It has been suggested that he passed through New York and learned about cobblestone construction there. Very little else is known about him, and it is not certain that he personally worked as a mason. The house he left behind, however, strongly suggests that somebody involved knew exactly what he was doing.

The exterior was constructed with carefully selected cobbles reportedly taken from the nearby Rock River. Behind that decorative surface is a heavier supporting wall of larger stones. Together, the walls are approximately fifteen inches thick.

The corners are reinforced and decorated with large blocks of Platteville limestone called quoins. The foundation is made from Galena dolomite. The house also retains the balanced proportions, low roof and orderly arrangement associated with Greek Revival architecture. A Victorian porch was added later, giving the front of the building a visible layer from another period.

In other words, this was never just a pile of river rocks arranged into the general shape of a house. It was a carefully designed structure made from several varieties of regional stone, combining practical frontier construction with a recognizable architectural style.

The Herrick house became Rockford’s generally accepted “oldest house” after another early residence disappeared. The Daniel Shaw Haight House, built in 1842, was demolished in 1967. Haight had established the settlement on the east side of the Rock River that eventually joined the west-side settlement associated with Germanicus Kent and Thatcher Blake. Losing his house apparently elevated the Herrick house into first place among the survivors.

But “oldest surviving house” is a surprisingly difficult title to award.

Dates attached to nineteenth-century buildings are not always exact. A property may have begun as a small cabin and later been rebuilt around. Tax records may identify when land changed hands rather than when a structure was completed. Oral histories can conflict with deeds, maps and architectural evidence. Buildings also move, expand and disguise their original forms under later additions.

That may explain why some historical accounts call the Herrick house Rockford’s oldest while official preservation material now stops at “one of the oldest.”

The uncertainty does not diminish the building. If anything, it makes the house more interesting. A definitive claim ends the discussion. A disputed claim gives Rockford something to investigate.

Which surviving house challenges it? Is there another structure containing an older cabin beneath a newer exterior? Does the disagreement concern the construction date, the definition of a house or the boundaries of Rockford when the building was erected? Somewhere in property records, early maps, tax rolls or an overlooked newspaper item may be the answer.

The Herrick-Logli Cobblestone House was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980. It is also a designated Rockford landmark. Those protections recognize something more important than a numerical ranking: the building is a rare physical connection to Rockford before factories, furniture companies and expanding neighborhoods transformed the city.

Thousands of people travel Broadway without realizing that the river stones beside them have been holding up the same walls since 1847.

Whether the Herrick house is first, second or merely somewhere near the beginning, it has survived long enough to make the distinction almost beside the point.

Almost.

Rockford’s Symbol: Enduring Art or a Giant Red Boondoggle?

Rockford’s Symbol: Enduring Art or a Giant Red Boondoggle?

There are certain things a Rockford artist eventually learns are expected of them. Sooner or later, somebody is going to suggest a sock monkey. A screw is always available. The Rockford Peaches remain eternally on deck. And looming over all of it, quite literally, is The Symbol.

You know The Symbol. Everybody in Rockford knows The Symbol, even if quite a few people couldn't tell you what it is supposed to symbolize.

Officially titled Symbol, the enormous sculpture standing near the Rock River was created by Russian-born American sculptor Alexander Liberman, one of the major figures in 20th-century American monumental sculpture. Constructed from massive steel cylinders painted bright red, the work has become one of Rockford's most recognizable landmarks.

But Rockford's relationship with it has never been quite that simple.

When Symbol arrived in the 1970s, it immediately became something Rockford excels at producing: an argument.

To supporters, it was exactly the sort of ambitious public artwork a city like Rockford should have. Here was a monumental sculpture by an internationally recognized artist, placed prominently along the river and impossible to mistake for anything else. Rockford wasn't merely decorating a park. It was participating in contemporary art on a scale usually associated with much larger cities.

To critics, it was a collection of giant red pipes.

And expensive ones.

That disagreement has followed Symbol for decades. Depending on whom you ask, it is an important example of modern public sculpture, an enduring Rockford landmark, an incomprehensible pile of industrial tubing, or evidence that somebody somewhere had access to public money and very persuasive presentation materials.

Which may be precisely why it has succeeded.

Public art that everyone immediately agrees is pleasant tends to become invisible. A tasteful statue sits in a park. People walk past it. Nobody argues about it at the dinner table thirty years later.

Rockford has been arguing about Symbol for roughly half a century.

Liberman's work makes particular sense in an industrial city. His monumental sculptures frequently used cylinders, beams and other fabricated steel forms, transforming the vocabulary of factories and heavy industry into abstraction. In Rockford—a city whose identity was built around manufacturing, machinery and metalworking—the material doesn't exactly feel foreign.

It looks manufactured because it is.

It looks industrial because it is.

And it looks a little like somebody dropped the contents of a gigantic machine shop beside the Rock River because, well, this is Rockford.

Over time, however, something happened that neither the sculpture's defenders nor its detractors could completely control. Symbol stopped merely being a controversial piece of public art and became The Symbol.

The capitalization almost feels necessary.

It became part of the city's visual shorthand. Photograph Rockford long enough and eventually The Symbol appears. Design something intended to announce ROCKFORD and somebody will suggest putting The Symbol in it. Along with the sock monkey, the screw and the Rockford Peaches, it entered that small collection of images Rockford continually uses to explain itself to itself.

That doesn't mean everybody suddenly decided they liked it.

That's the interesting part.

A landmark doesn't necessarily require affection. It requires recognition. The Eiffel Tower was despised by prominent artists when it was built. Plenty of cities contain monuments their residents spent years mocking before eventually becoming fiercely protective of them. Familiarity does strange things to public art. Yesterday's monstrosity becomes today's landmark and tomorrow's irreplaceable piece of civic identity.

Imagine someone announcing tomorrow that The Symbol was going to be removed permanently.

People who have spent forty years calling it ugly would probably be among the first to complain.

Because after all this time, the question isn't really whether Symbol is beautiful.

The better question is whether Rockford would feel slightly less like Rockford without it.

Rockford Symbol

I think it would.

And maybe that's the final verdict on the old argument about whether The Symbol was a boondoggle or enduring art.

A boondoggle disappears when the money is gone.

Art hangs around long enough for everybody to argue about what it means.

Nearly fifty years later, those giant red pipes are still standing beside the Rock River, and Rockford is still arguing.

That sounds suspiciously like art.