About the former St. Vincent Hospital building
“Benedictine sisters began their work in the area that is now the Crookston diocese in 1899, when Mother Scholastica Kerst of Duluth opened St. Anthony’s Hospital over a store in Bemidji . In 1900 she arrived in Crookston to assess the need for a hospital in this lumbering center. After some study she opened Riverside Hospital in a frame building on Pine Street west of the Great Northern Railroad, on the bank of the Red Lake River . The first medical insurance in the state was sold to lumbermen for $2.00 a year. In 1902 the sisters purchased land on Seventh Street and there built St. Vincent ’s Hospital.” (The Benedictine) In 1901 the Diocese of Crookston was created from dividing the Diocese of Duluth. The Benedictine sisters from Duluth started and staffed many schools and two hospitals. In 1919 Bishop Timothy Corbett asked the Mother Eustacia Beyenka to come to Crookston with sister companions to establish a new priory. “ St. Vincent ’s Hospital served as