The landmark Smith-Esteb Memorial Hospital has stood along US-27 and Potter Shop Road south of Richmond for decades. Last year, I shared the story of how it became the Wayne County Home before falling silent in the 1970s. A few days later, I received an unexpected invitation from Donald Reed of Cross Road Christian Recovery Center for Women: would I like to see the inside? It wasn’t an offer I was about to refuse! Armed with flashlights and accompanied by some backup -my mom- I finally got the chance to explore one of Indiana’s most fascinating institutions. Here’s what I found.
The story of Smith-Esteb Memorial Hospital began in 1917, when ninety-year-old Clarissa Smith proposed donating her family’s 235-acre homestead, Smithfield, as the site of a new tuberculosis treatment center1. At the heart of the property stood her sixteen-room mansion, built in 1861 but modernized, which she envisioned serving as the hospital building itself2. Unfortunately, turning that vision into reality proved more complicated than anyone expected: officials struggled to find the money needed to adapt the estate for medical use, and several of Clarissa’s grandsons fought the donation, insisting the property rightfully belonged to them.
Despite those setbacks, Clarissa Smith’s vision ultimately prevailed. In 1933, her daughter, India Esteb, donated the family’s land along with $100,000 to make the hospital a reality3. The old Smith mansion couldn’t be incorporated into the new structure, but four of its stately Corinthian columns were reused to create a monumental entrance to the new facility4. Named in honor of its two benefactors, Smith-Esteb Memorial Hospital opened on October 7, 19345. With forty-eight beds, it was one of only eight county tuberculosis hospitals in Indiana6.
Before long, it wasn’t the hospital that needed more space- it was the people who worked there. In 1940, officials completed a $25,000 residence fifty feet south of the hospital for seven nurses, their supervisor, and the hospital superintendent and his wife7. Unfortunately, even that proved inadequate. Just nine years later, the home received a sixteen-room addition as part of a $65,000 expansion that also included a 40,000-gallon water tower and a separate house for the superintendent8.
Despite its larger campus, Smith-Esteb’s days as a tuberculosis hospital were numbered. New antibiotics and sanitation improvements largely eradicated TB around here, and Smith-Esteb closed in November 1958. Its seven remaining patients were transferred to Fort Wayne’s Irene Byron Health Center, a hundred miles northwest as the crow flies9. Fortunately, though, the building’s story didn’t end there: later that same year, sixty-one residents of Wayne County’s 1840s poor farm near Centerville were moved into the former hospital. As a result, Smith-Esteb became the new Wayne County Home10.
The hospital’s second act as a place for Wayne County’s elderly and indigent began promisingly. Over time, however, the resident population declined, while mounting repair costs and increasingly stringent regulations made the aging complex more difficult to maintain11. The county home closed in 1975 and was sold the following year. Its new owners, Paul and Eleanor Van Middlesworth, envisioned giving the campus yet another purpose by converting the buildings into a retirement community.
Unfortunately, tragedy intervened when Paul was killed in an accident. Only the nurses’ quarters had been renovated by then, rebuilt into a ten-unit apartment complex. The hospital building was left vacant, but it nearly found new life again in 1979 as a proposed mental health treatment center12. That conversion never materialized, though, and the stately 1934 structure has mostly stood silent ever since13.
The property changed hands several times over the following decades. The Van Middlesworths sold it to a private owner in 2004, and First Bank Richmond acquired the campus through foreclosure five years later. Hope returned in 201014, when Shepherd’s Way Christian Ministries purchased the former hospital and reopened the old nurses’ home as the Cross Road Christian Recovery Center for Women15.
Yesterday, Mom and I pulled into the parking lot at Cross Roads, where Director of Operations Donald Reed was waiting to greet us. Before exploring the abandoned Smith-Esteb Hospital itself, Donald invited us inside the former nurses’ home, which now serves as the heart of Cross Roads’ ministry. It was the perfect place to begin: the old hospital tells the story of healing from generations past, but the beautifully renovated nurses’ quarters are where healing continues today.
Cross Road’s four-month Residential Recovery Program provides women with a structured environment where they learn biblical principles, life skills, and recovery tools. The building itself reflects that mission: rather than the institutional atmosphere I expected, I found bright, welcoming dormitory rooms that felt more inviting than many hotel rooms I’ve stayed in.
That transformation didn’t happen by accident. A new roof, a completely remodeled interior, a new septic system, and countless hours of volunteer labor turned the former nurses’ home into a warm, welcoming place for women rebuilding their lives. The same care and attention were evident throughout the campus. Women who complete the four-month Cross Roads Residential Recovery Program can continue their journey through the six-month Victory Transitional Program, where the dormitory rooms were just as attractive and inviting. Shared spaces were equally impressive.
Fortunately, not every trace of the building’s past has disappeared beneath fresh paint and modern finishes. Here and there, original details from the nurses’ home still survive, including this handsome newel post and curvy oak handrail, both probably from 1940. Small details like that balustrade connect the building’s many lives across more than eight decades.
After our trip through the remarkable Cross Road campus, it was time to head into the old hospital itself. The building is secure: locked, monitored by a small army of surveillance cameras, and very much off-limits to curious trespassers. Still, we ignited our flashlights and made our way down to the basement.
When Smith-Esteb opened in 1934, the subterranean level housed much of its behind-the-scenes operations: a kitchen and dining room that kept patients and staff fed, as well as a laundry, boiler room, and two massive furnaces that heated the entire complex. The basement was a maze of corridors and rooms.
Soon, we found ourselves in the old dining room. It stretched so far that it seemed to occupy most of the hospital’s 134-foot length! Even in the room’s dilapidated state, several clues hinted at how it once functioned: a series of wide openings suggests the space could be divided into smaller sections when needed, perhaps to separate patients or accommodate different groups of officials. One opening still retained a lone bifold door.
The basement also preserved two fascinating pieces of the hospital’s original infrastructure. The first was a dumbwaiter- a small freight elevator used to move meals, linens, medicines, and other supplies between floors without occupying the main passenger elevator. The second was the shaft for that full-size elevator. The elevator car itself, it seemed, was stranded elsewhere in the building.
With nothing but our flashlights to cut through the darkness, Donald led Mom and me through the rest of the old hospital’s pitch-black basement. Before long, we reached a narrow concrete stairway climbing toward the first floor. Decades of compacted debris blanketed the worn steps, while rusted handrails and peeling walls bore the scars of years of abandonment. Beyond the reach of our lights, the staircase disappeared into darkness. Nevertheless, we climbed -one foot a time given the debris- and left the hospital’s mechanical heart for the place where patients lived, hoped for a cure, recovered, and sometimes died.
On the first full floor, our flashlight beams stretched down a long hallway lined with identical doorways. Ceiling tiles sagged overhead, chunks of plaster littered the floor, and every open doorway seemed to invite a look into another forgotten room. The symmetry of the hallway, combined with the absence of sound, gave the space an unmistakably liminal quality.
It didn’t take long to find the building’s primary entryway. Given Smith-Esteb’s imposing columned portico, I expected it to open into a spacious, elegant lobby. Instead, visitors stepped into a surprisingly modest entrance hall dominated by the passenger elevator whose shaft we’d discovered in the basement. Here, we found the car itself. The remains of a bench still clung to one wall, while rust, peeling paint, and fragments of the collapsed ceiling hung overhead.
I found myself lingering in front of the elevator’s control panel, fascinated by how much such a small detail could reveal about the building. The buttons remained in place, labeled B, G, 1, 2, and 3. At first glance, the arrangement seemed unusual until I remembered Smith-Esteb’s vertical layout. Its partially exposed lower level functioned as a raised basement, while a rear door opened onto the ground floor above it. From there, the elevator continued to the first, second, and third floors.
Turning away from the elevator, I found myself facing Smith-Esteb’s front entrance. It was a surprising contrast: the entrance hall was simple and utilitarian, making it clear that the architects had reserved their architectural flourish for the building’s exterior. In this hospital, practicality ultimately mattered far more than spectacle.
That said, the lobby is a shadow of its former self. The windows are boarded, ceiling tiles sag overhead, and plaster has fallen away from the walls. Even so, it’s easy to picture patients, visitors, and staff once passing through these doors beneath the soft daylight that still filtered through a transom.
Just to the right of the elevator was the hospital’s pharmacy. Little remains beyond a battered wooden counter and a sliding service window, but it wasn’t hard to imagine nurses stepping up to collect medications while pharmacists worked on the other side of the partition. The countertop is buried beneath decades of dust and fallen plaster.
Flanking Smith-Esteb’s main entrance were matching sets of glass-paneled doors at the end of each hall that once opened out to a pair of solariums. The placement of those wooden sunrooms was no accident: during the early twentieth century, fresh air and sunlight were considered essential parts of tuberculosis treatment. Hospitals like Smith-Esteb were often designed to give patients easy access to both.
The second floor marked the end of our climb. Its layout closely mirrored the first, with a long central corridor flanked by patient rooms on either side. Time, however, had been far less kind to this level. Ceiling tiles sagged overhead, doors stood ajar, and our flashlight beams disappeared into room after room that had sat empty for decades.
Most of the patient rooms we explored had deteriorated significantly. Water damage had reduced many to little more than crumbling plaster, broken windows, and piles of debris. In a few, nature had reclaimed the space entirely. In one, small trees had taken root where hospital beds once stood!
Others, however, offered a glimpse of what Smith-Esteb must have looked like during its years of service. Rooms like this one still retained much of their original plaster walls and simple trim, though the paint had blistered and peeled away in thick layers after years of moisture. A boarded window admitted only the faintest sliver of daylight, while our flashlights revealed the room one corner at a time.
One detail that caught Mom’s eye lay was beneath our feet. As she and I brushed aside decades of dust and fallen plaster, a colorful geometric tile floor gradually emerged from the debris. Even after years of neglect, its blues, reds, and grays hinted at the care that had gone into the hospital’s construction. Smith-Esteb was never intended to be an extravagant institution, but it wasn’t built inexpensively, either. The tile we found was a thoughtful detail.
One final staircase beckoned us toward the third story, but ascending it wasn’t meant to be. I’d love to return and explore the top of the building some day! Apparently, tuberculosis patients were given access to parts of the roof to spend hours in the fresh, country breeze. It would have been quite a view.
Instead of reaching the building’s peak, we retraced our steps, found our way out, and re-entered daylight. My flashlight clicked off for the last time, but my mind lingered on the stories still hidden behind the walls and beneath the floors we hadn’t been able to explore. Even with much left unseen, finally stepping inside the old Smith-Esteb Home sated nearly a lifetime of curiosity.
As much as I’d love to see Smith-Esteb restored, I have to be realistic. Donald doesn’t believe it’s likely either, at least not without an investment of several million dollars. Rehabilitating a structure of its size and condition would be an enormous undertaking, one that’s difficult to justify for an organization like Cross Roads that’s largely funded by grants and donations.
The good news is that Smith-Esteb isn’t in immediate danger of collapsing- its bricks form a non-structural curtain wall wrapped around a reinforced concrete frame. According to Donald, that skeleton remains remarkably sound! The old hospital could continue standing for another century or more, overlooking the countryside as a reminder of the generations of patients, staff, and families whose lives passed through its halls.
I can’t thank Cross Roads enough for inviting me inside the old Smith-Esteb Hospital and its neighboring nurses’ residence. For years, I’d steal another glance and wonder what remained behind those weathered brick walls. Like so many abandoned buildings, it seemed destined to remain a mystery- at least until it wasn’t. Exploring Smith-Esteb was the fulfillment of a curiosity I’d carried for nearly thirty years! Sometimes, the pursuit of history really does reward those willing to wait.
Of course, my opportunity to explore wouldn’t have arisen if it weren’t for or people like Donald, Executive Director Joni Reed, and a dedicated team of volunteers who have accomplished something remarkable at Cross Roads. They’ve preserved and maintained Smith-Esteb’s historic nurses’ residence, but more importantly, they’ve also ensured that it continues to serve the community in a meaningful way. During the sixteen years since Cross Roads opened, the ministry has helped more than 900 women rebuild their lives.
That’s a legacy every bit as important as preserving old bricks and mortar. Historic buildings are at their best when they’re filled with purpose, and Cross Roads has given Smith-Esteb a new chapter. If you’d like to support its ministry and help Cross Roads continue to change lives, consider making a donation by clicking here.
Sources Cited
1 Gibbs, C. (191, January 20). Hospital helped TB patients. The Richmond Paladium-Item. p. 37.
2 Smith-Esteb Memorial Hospital Will Be Dedicated Today (1934, October 7). The Richmond Item. p. 11.
3 (See footnote 2).
4 (See footnote 2).
5 (See footnote 2).
6 Smith-Esteb Needs More Housing Room, Nurses To Meet Conditions (1949, May 7). The Richmond Palladium-Item. p. 7.
7 Nurses Move Into Comfortable New home at Smith-Esteb Hospital South of City (1940, March 4). The Richmond Palladium-Item. p. 12.
8 Smith-Esteb Hopes To Double Capacity Of Its Nurses’ Home. The Richmond Palladium-Item. p. 1.
9 Seven Smith-Esteb Patients Will Be Transferred Nov. 1 (1958, October 23). The Richmond Palladium-Item. p. 1.
10 White, E. (1958, August 31). Propose County Home Move To Smith-Esteb. The Richmond Palladium-Item. p. 1.
11 Lord, F. (1976, July 11). Sale Of Smith-Esteb Home Site To End 40-Year County Tenure. The Richmond Palladium-Item. p. 5.
12 Warrick, C. (1981, June 17). New use eyed for old Smith-Esteb. The Richmond Palladium-Item. p. 2.
13 (See footnote 12).
14 Parcel 89-19-01-000-207.000-001 (2026). Office of the Assessor. Wayne County [Richmond]. Web. Retrieved June 27, 2026.
15 About Us (n.d.). Cross Road Christian Recovery Center for Women [Richmond]. Web. Retrieved June 27, 2026.
What a great opportunity! It is amazing to me that they had to give up on the building at only 40 years old. That would be like abandoning a structure built in the mid 80s today. Maybe it’s just my advancing age, but buildings from the 80s still seem reasonably modern to me.