The 460-bed hospital opened in Arcadia in 1957, after moving from downtown Los Angeles. Methodist was the state's first community hospital to have a psychiatric unit. Its nursery school was one of the first corporate daycare facilities in the U.S. It was an Official Hospital of the 1984 Olympic Games.

To keep up with the changing needs of the community, several upgrades have been made to the original facility. In 1998, the Berger Tower was completed, adding 169 beds. Methodist underwent a major renovation and expansion in 2006, and in the fall of 2011, a new five-story patient tower and new emergency department were opened.

The Methodist Hospital School of Nursing

A School of Nursing opened at the hospital in 1915, with a class of 30 students. Ten years later, aresidence was built to accommodate 150 graduate and student nurses. This four-story brick building, known as Philomena Hall, was connected to the hospital by an underground corridor and provided accommodations, classrooms and a gymnasium for the nurses. Beginning in 1944 (after a nine-year school closure), additional housing for nurses was provided in a refurbished residential house adjacent to Philomena Hall. After more than 40 years of operation and the graduation of hundreds of talented young nurses, the School of Nursing closed. Times had changed, and the practice of nursing education had moved into the domain of the formal education system. The school was phased out in 1958 with the graduation of the last nursing class.[47]

In popular culture

U.S. Route 66, immortalized in song and literature, passes through Arcadia, on