Interview with David Baltimore - Caltech Oral Histories

Baltimore-82
never came to pass for a variety of reasons, including the difficulty of actually doing much
building on that campus, because of zoning issues, and where it was, and whatever. And I’m not
sure we could have ever put together the resources to help them do that. And then St. Luke’s
came up, and it seemed like a tremendous opportunity. So we contacted, with the help of Wally
[Walter L.] Weisman who was the board vice chair, the president of Tenet and asked him
whether he’d consider such a thing. Well, he was actually very positive about the idea.
LIPPINCOTT: They’d already had the idea of selling it
BALTIMORE: Yes, they had announced that they were leaving and closing it, so there was no
question that it was up for sale. The city didn’t want to see the property become a real estate
development, which it could have—and I suppose may yet. So I arranged to purchase it for $12
million, which was a steal at the time. And they were being very good about it; it was a steal. It
wasn’t clear who else was bidding for it. So we bought it, and we did put one program up
there—the 30-meter telescope design program—and we outfitted the old cloister there. Because
there was also a little chapel—a lovely room—and there was a religious group that lived there, in
little rooms.
LIPPINCOTT: Like an abbey, or a monastery
BALTIMORE: Yes, it was like a monastery, but it was women, I think. And that was separate
from the hospital and lent itself best to adaptation to the needs of the 30-meter telescope project.
So the project moved up, and it’s still there, as far as I know; I don’t actually know what’s going
on up there now. Then we looked at what it would take to recondition the hospital building for
various sorts of projects that various people had in mind, and it turned out to be just hugely
expensive.
LIPPINCOTT: To make labs there
BALTIMORE: To make anything there, because of the need to deal with the whole structure.
You couldn’t just take a piece of it and do something; you had to really work on the whole
structure, because it needed electrical work, plumbing, and all that sort of stuff. So the up-front