Our History: From St. Claude Avenue to Kenner

The D’Ingianni family’s place in New Orleans medicine goes back to the 1940s, when Dr. Vincente D’Ingianni worked as a surgeon in the city’s hospitals. The story has two chapters: a neighborhood hospital in Bywater, and a family gym and diet clinic in Kenner forty years later.

A surgeon in 1940s New Orleans

Dr. D’Ingianni’s earliest published papers, from 1944 and 1945, list him on the staffs of Charity, Mercy and French Hospitals in New Orleans. Over the next decade he wrote on chest surgery, recovery after operations, surgical sutures, gynecologic surgery, and general and abdominal surgery. See Publications.

The D’Ingianni Foundation Hospital

3501 & 3419 St. Claude Avenue · 1940s–1982

In the late 1940s, Dr. Vincente D’Ingianni and Dr. Irwin Fontenelle opened medical offices in a two-story house at 3501 St. Claude Avenue, at the corner of Gallier Street in the Bywater neighborhood. They added hospital beds for their patients, and for a time the practice was known as the D’Ingianni Foundation Hospital. Dr. Fontenelle also co-wrote several of Dr. D’Ingianni’s papers.

By the 1960s it had become St. Claude General Hospital, and other physicians, including Dr. Frederick Pou, were on its staff. The house looked residential, but it held beds for about 35 patients. Neighbors helped support the hospital: local women crocheted doilies and embroidered handkerchiefs as prizes for Keno games. A plaque inside the front door recorded the mayor’s thanks to the staff for caring for people injured when the roof of the Nola Theater collapsed during a 1961 rainstorm.

In 1968 the staff announced plans for a new building. The hospital moved to a 100-bed facility one block away at 3419 St. Claude Avenue. Its physician owners later sold the hospital and donated the proceeds to a foundation that funds medical and nursing scholarships at Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center. Lifemark Corporation owned the facility from 1972 until 1982, when the hospital ceased operations.

The 3419 St. Claude Avenue building, a reinforced-concrete structure built from 1971 to 1973, has since been recommended for listing on the National Register of Historic Places. Louisiana’s review committee associated it with the expansion and modernization of medicine in New Orleans after World War II. The LSU Health Sciences Center Libraries’ guide to the history of South Louisiana hospitals lists the original institution at 3501 St. Claude Avenue as the Frank D’Ingianni Medical Foundation.

Sources

• “Life Along St. Claude Avenue,” New Orleans Magazine
• Preservation Resource Center of New Orleans: St. Claude General Hospital building recommended for the National Register
• LSU Health Sciences Center Libraries: History of South Louisiana Hospitals (New Orleans)

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D’Ingianni’s Fitness Clinic

Kenner, Louisiana · 1980s

In the 1980s the family opened a new chapter in Kenner, Louisiana. Dr. D’Ingianni’s son, Vincente D’Ingianni, Sr., of New Orleans, who had founded Binary Systems, Inc. in 1977, went on to found D’Ingianni’s Fitness Clinic, a gym and diet clinic. Vincente D’Ingianni, MD, worked there with him, running the clinic’s diet and health side. Dr. D’Ingianni’s grandson, Vincente D’Ingianni II, worked at the clinic and trained there every day, including on the bench press at the Cajun Classic in February 1985.

In the mid-1980s the Fitness Clinic became popular with serious bodybuilders and weightlifting enthusiasts in the area. In February 1985 the Cajun Classic was held at the Fitness Clinic, and the gym floor filled with spectators. The photographs below come from the family’s own albums.

Source

• The Fitness Clinic, Kenner, LA (community listing); D’Ingianni family recollections.

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The Judokai: the next chapter

Vincente D’Ingianni II, who worked and trained at the Fitness Clinic every day, carries the story forward as Head Coach of the judo club and gym, The Judokai. He also runs Binary Systems, Inc., the company his father, Vincente D’Ingianni, Sr., founded. The Judokai was meant to be the modern continuation of D’Ingianni’s Fitness Clinic. Learn more at judokai.net.

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