Read time: 6 min.

An imposing cluster of old buildings along US-27 between Richmond and Liberty was a riddle to me as a kid. My family passed them on the way to camping trips, and their red brick and silent windows hinted at a story I didn’t know. I saw them again on a courthouse trip fifteen years later, but it wasn’t until much more recently that I learned their secret: the landmarks we’d passed were once the Smith-Esteb Memorial Hospital, a tuberculosis sanitarium that served Wayne County.

The story of Smith-Esteb Memorial Hospital began with a mother’s grief and an act of generosity. In 1917, ninety-year-old Clarissa Smith -the widow of a prominent real estate magnate¹– decided to transform tragedy into hope. Legend has it that she’d lost three of her four children to tuberculosis. In their honor, she offered up her family’s 235-acre homestead, Smithfield, as the location for a new hospital². A sixteen-room mansion built in 1861 stood at the center of the property, and  Smith believed it could serve a greater purpose for those who battled the same disease that devastated her children. 

At the time, it was thought that Smith’s palatial estate would be the perfect spot for a TB hospital. The mansion -with enormous iron columns hauled in from Cincinnati- had been modernized and stood at the crest of a high hill. It was only seven miles south of Richmond on Liberty Pike and featured a commanding view of the countryside³. Even more compelling was the land surrounding the home, ideal for building colony houses where patients could stay during the warmer summer months⁴. Wayne County officials were amenable to the idea, but ran into difficulties. 

Beyond struggling to fund improvements to the site, the county grappled with the will of several of Clarissa Smith’s grandsons, who believed the property was rightfully theirs. Despite the challenges, Smith’s daughter India Esteb finally donated the family land in 1933, along with $100,000 to complete a new hospital⁵. The family’s Civil War-era mansion was razed, but its Corinthian columns were retained to create a landmark portico at the front of the new building⁶. 

The Smith-Esteb Hospital was finally dedicated on October 7, 1934. Visitors and patients entered from underneath the portico and reached a lobby with an elevator. The first floor consisted of a kitchen and offices, with sun porches at each end of the hall. Private rooms and wards took up the rest of the first floor along with the second, while nurses’ rooms and facilities for X-rays, equipment sterilization, and operations stood in the third. The basement featured another kitchen and dining room⁷. 

By 1949, the Smith-Esteb campus was growing. A new two-story nurses’ residence rose just south of the main hospital, followed a year later by a modern home for the superintendent. It looked like the facility was hitting its stride, but the momentum didn’t last. Despite its expanded footprint, Smith-Esteb soon fell on hard times. Rising costs and a sharp decline in tuberculosis cases, thanks to the introduction of new antibiotics and improvements in sanitation, spelled trouble for the facility. In November 1958, the hospital officially closed its doors.

As the hospital shuttered, its seven remaining patients were transferred to the Irene Byron Health Center in Fort Wayne⁸. That same month, a new chapter began: the hospital was repurposed to house the sixty-one residents of the century-old Wayne County Home near Centerville, which closed upon Smith-Esteb’s new vacancy⁹. 

The hospital’s second act, serving the elderly and indigent, was an initial success. Unfortunately, occupancy dwindled again as the need for new repairs and compliance with new regulations came to light¹⁰. The home closed in 1975 and was sold the following year. Its buyers, Paul and Eleanor Van Middlesworth, initially planned to continue operating the campus as a retirement home by converting the buildings into apartments. 

Unfortunately, Paul Van Middleworth died in a lawn-mowing accident soon after the sale was completed. As a result, the 1949 nurses’ quarters became the only building turned into apartments- ten of them. The main hospital was left alone, but nearly became a mental health treatment center in 1979¹¹. Unfortunately, the conversion never happened¹². As far as I can tell, the 1934 building has been sitting silent ever since- locked up, forgotten, and left to the elements.

Still, the grounds haven’t been entirely forgotten. Since 2010, the 1949 nurses’ quarters have found new life as the Cross Road Christian Recovery Center for Women¹³. It offers hope from the same building where hospital staff once lived. Perched high on a hill just north of Potter Shop Road, the recovery center shares the slope with the original hospital building and an imposing water tower. Combined, the three sentinels overlooking the surrounding countryside each tell a different chapter of the site’s story.

From Clarissa Smith’s grief-stricken gift to decades of shifting purposes, Wayne County’s old Smith-Esteb campus has worn many faces as a sanitarium, county home, retirement dream, and now a place of recovery. The hilltop it occupies has seen hope, hardship, and long stretches of silence, but its buildings still stand as quiet witnesses to a century of change. 

Sources Cited
1 $20,000 Country Home Is Offered To County, Free, As Tuberculosis Hospital. The Richmond Item. p. 1. 
2 Gibbs, C. (191, January 20). Hospital helped TB patients. The Richmond Paladium-Item. p. 37. .
3 Smith-Esteb Memorial Hospital Will Be Dedicated Today (1934, October 7). The Richmond Item. p. 11. 
4 (See footnote 1). 
5 Smith-Esteb Memorial Hospital Will Be Dedicated Today (1934, October 7). The Richmond Item. p. 11. 
6 (See footnote 5). 
7 (See footnote 5). 
8 Seven Smith-Esteb Patients Will Be Transferred Nov. 1 (1958, October 23). The Richmond Palladium-Item. p. 1. 
9 White, E. (1958, August 31). Propose County Home Move To Smith-Esteb. The Richmond Palladium-Item. p. 1. 
10 Lord, F. (1976, July 11). Sale Of smith-ester Home Site To End 40-Year County Tenure. The Richmond Palladium-Item. p. 5. 
11 Warrick, C. (1981, June 17). New use eyed for old Smith-Esteb. The Richmond Palladium-Item. p. 2. 
12 (See footnote 11). 
13 Martin Emery, M. (2017, March 8). Help sought for women’s addiction program. The Richmond Palladium-Item. p. A3.