The Intriguing History of Cincinnati’s Dunham Hospital

Inscription and tuberculosis symbol from the
stone entrance to Dunham Hospital.
This photo serves as a link to the finding aid for the Cincinnati Branch Tuberculosis (Dunham)
Hospital Collection.

By: Nathan Hood

A few miles west of downtown Cincinnati is the Dunham Recreation Center: a significant expanse of land mostly open to the public. The land however, was not always recreational; at one time it was the location of the Dunham Hospital – the same hospital after which the Center is named. Now long since abandoned, Dunham Hospital was once a branch of the Cincinnati Hospital and a means of treating as well as quarantining tuberculosis patients. But such facts are only a small portion of this institution’s rich history! Indeed, the hospital’s story arguably begins sometime during the early 1800’s.

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