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During the Second World War, the U.S. Army constructed a 131-building hospital on level farmland a quarter mile northwest of this marker. The army built the facility as a 1,520-bed hospital in the winter and spring of 1942-’43. It was later expanded to 168 buildings with a 2,000-bed capacity, including a German POW camp for 234 prisoners engaged in hospital work. Between June 1943 and March 1946, when the facility closed, 17,608 veterans were treated here, most having returned with injuries received in the European or Pacific theaters of war. Convalescence and rehabilitation were the hospital’s primary missions. Most patients returned to active duty when they recovered. After the war, the facility became the Cambridge State Hospital, which treated mentally ill and developmentally disabled Ohioans until 2008. Thereafter, the facility became the privately-operated Cambridge Behavioral Hospital and the state-operated Cambridge Developmental Center.
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Pastor of St. Mary’s Church, Rev. Thomas F. Conlon met with the newly appointed bishop of the Toledo Diocese, Rt. Rev. Joseph Schrembs, to discuss building a charity hospital for the community. Community leaders and physicians promoted the necessity of a hospital that cared for all people regardless of race, creed, or color. Seven acres of land were purchased from Miss Emma J. Bowe on West Market Street for the construction of a four-story, fireproof brick building. Designed by local businessman George W. Netcher, the new hospital cost approximately $75,000. At the hospital’s dedication on October 26, 1913, Bishop Schrembs praised the people of Tiffin saying, “I appealed to the public-spirited citizens and my appeal did not fall upon deaf ears, as this building testifies.”
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Daniel Arthur Rudd was born into slavery on August 7, 1854, in Bardstown, Kentucky. He became a newspaperman, lecturer, publicist, and tireless advocate for the Roman Catholic Church. After the Civil War Rudd moved to Springfield. Baptized and raised in Catholicism, he joined St. Raphael Parish, where the philosophy of racial equality offered by the church solidified his vision of justice. By 1885 he had established his own weekly newspaper, The Ohio State Tribune. He rebranded it The American Catholic Tribune (ACT) after moving to Cincinnati. Rudd claimed ACT was the only Catholic newspaper owned by an African American. At the height of its popularity in 1892, the publication had a circulation of 10,000. In 1893 Rudd was asked to chair the Afro-American Press Association, representing more than 200 black-owned newspapers.
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Named for the streetcar turnaround once located at Euclid Avenue and East 107th Street, University Circle is a 600-acre district that is home to many of Cleveland’s major cultural, educational, medical, and service institutions. The area was first settled in 1799 by tavernkeeper Nathaniel Doan and became known as Doan’s Corners. In 1882, Western Reserve College moved here from Hudson, followed in 1885 by the Case School of Applied Science from downtown Cleveland. These two colleges federated in 1967 to become Case Western Reserve University. (continued on other side)
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About 60 leaders of Ohio hospitals gathered at the Hotel Breakers on August 25, 1915 to form the Ohio Hospital Association (OHA), the nation’s first state hospital association. Established 15 years after the American Hospital Association, the OHA formed, in part, to address state legislation regarding hospitals and public health. Issues addressed in OHA’s first years included Ohio’s 1915 Nurse Practice Act, workers’ compensation rates, and the federal Harrison Narcotics Tax Act. A century later, OHA represents 220 hospitals and 13 health systems guided by a mission “to collaborate with member hospitals and health systems to ensure a healthy Ohio.”
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The Dayton Veterans Affairs (VA) Medical Center was established by Congressional legislation signed by President Abraham Lincoln on March 3, 1865. One of the three original VA Hospitals in the United States, Dayton received its first Civil War Veterans in 1867. Although officially The Central Branch of the National Asylum for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers, the facility became known as Dayton Soldiers Home. By 1884, it was a self-sufficient planned community, providing hospital, living quarters, gardens, and amenities to 64 percent of the Veterans receiving institutional care from the U.S. government. An early tourist attraction, the campus boasted 517,106 visitors in 1906. Today, the Dayton VA Medical Center is a modern healthcare facility that continues to honor President Lincoln’s promise “To care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan.”
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In late 1911, the Right Reverend Joseph Schrembs, Toledo’s first Bishop, corresponded with Sister Mary Bernardine McMullen and two companions, Sister Mary Anthony McMullen and Sister Mary DeChantel Lyons, and asked them to come to Toledo to establish the second of three Catholic hospitals in the new diocese. Land was purchased in 1916 on the corner of Madison Avenue and 23rd Street to build what would become a seven-story hospital. Noted Chicago architect, Meyer J. Sturm, was hired to design and construct the hospital using up-to-date methods of hospital construction. Costing approximately $300,000, Mercy Hospital of Toledo was completed in 1918. Bishop Schrembs dedicated and blessed the hospital on June 21 in a grand ceremony involving clergy of the diocese and the Mercy Hospital Guild as guests of honor.
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Toledo State Hospital opened in January 1888 as the Toledo Asylum for the Insane. People were admitted with mild to severe forms of mental illness, and a variety of developmental, medical and neurological conditions, as well as for addictions, injuries, and old age. Originally built to house 650 people, by the 1950s its campus had grown to accommodate over 3,000. Growing access to new medications and treatments then began a gradual decline in patient population. Eventually, most of the buildings were razed, and much of the hospital’s property was transferred, later becoming the site of The Medical College of Ohio. This transfer included the two Toledo State Hospital cemeteries, with documented burials (as of 2009) totaling 1,994 persons. Toledo State Hospital New Cemetery was opened in 1922, when the Old Cemetery (1888-1922), located .5 miles to the northeast, reached capacity. (continued on other side)
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