Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota

In the M*A*S*H episode “Sometimes You Hear the Bullet” (season 1, Episode 17, first aired 28 January 1973), Lt. Colonel Henry Blake says

“I don't know. If I had the answer, I'd be at the Mayo Clinic. Does this place look like the Mayo Clinic?”

Ever since, we’ve wondered just what Mayo Clinic actually does look like. Well the lobby of the Gondo Building, the “centerpiece” of the Clinic, looks like this:

Mayo Clinic grew out of the practice of Dr. William Worrall Mayo, a frontier doctor. Following a devastating tornado in Rochester, Minnesota, in 1883, Dr. Mayo was coaxed by Mother Alfred Moes of the Sisters of Saint Francis to build a new hospital, St. Marys.

By 1892 his two sons, Dr. William J. Mayo and Dr. Charles H. Mayo were spending much of their time doing surgery at the hospital. They added the first partner to their practice, and the senior Dr. Mayo retired. Separate from the hospital, their practice became a not-for-profit entity in 1919 and continued to grow. These statues of the two brothers sit in front of the Gondo Building.

Only in 1986 did Mayo Clinic, St. Marys Hospital, and a second hospital, Rochester Methodist, unite under the Mayo Foundation.

Mayo Clinic is considered the prototype integrated group practice. Today it employs over 1,900 doctors and scientists and a total of over 30,000 people at the Rochester campus alone.

There is art throughout the complex, including this work by famed glass blower Dale Chihuly.

The building with the terra-cotta trimmed tower is the 1928 Plummer Building. When built, it was the main clinic building and the tallest building in Minnesota. It remained the tallest building in Rochester until the Gonda Building was completed in 2001.

By the way, for historic reasons that are not entirely clear to us, the place is officially “Mayo Clinic,” not “The Mayo Clinic.”