KEY POINTS:
North Shore Hospital turns 50 next Monday with the celebrations to focus on the changes the hospital and its region have adjusted to since 1958.
The hospital's opening ceremony 50 years ago was presided over by Prime Minister Walter Nash. The hospital's doors opened to patients on July 28.
It is estimated almost 90,000 babies have been born at the hospital since then.
The hospital cost about £350,000 - more than $14 million in today's money - and soaked up £45,000 each year in running costs.
The three-year construction delivered a hospital designed for a population of 79,000 people. Now serving the booming growth areas of Rodney and Waitakere as well as North Shore City, the hospital's catchment population has increased dramatically in its lifetime.
North Shore City alone has about 220,000 people. When combined with the populations of Rodney and Waitakere, the hospital's catchment is more than 500,000 people.
Opening a year before the Harbour Bridge, the hospital's initial bed plan included 44 maternity beds and six casualty beds.
Casualty patients were given early treatment before being ferried across the Waitemata Harbour.
At night, when the ferries had stopped running, patients needing to be transferred to Auckland had to endure a two-hour journey through Greenhithe, around the top of the harbour.
The 50th anniversary celebrations will include a commemorative booklet of former staff and patients' memories, gifts handed out to mothers and their babies, certificates, badges, an historical display and a lunch.
A commemorative plaque will be unveiled by Margaret Golding, whose son was the first baby to be born at the hospital.
