This Month's
Price Hill Treasure
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Price Hill Historical Society P.O. Box 7020 Cincinnati, OH 45205-7020 513/251-2888 phhs@pricehill.org
Copyright 2000-2010 Price Hill Historical Society
Every few months, we feature a new Treasure of Price Hill from our museum collection and archives, from our newsletter and oral histories, or simply from around Price Hill. If you have any ideas for a "Treasure" that needs to be featured or preserved, let us know at phhs@pricehill.org.
the Guerley farm. In 1912, the Branch Hospital was separated from Cincinnati Hospital and became the Cincinnati Tubercular Hospital. More buildings were constructed, and there was also a field of tents where patients were housed, because fresh air was considered a treatment for tuberculosis.
Besides the hospital buildings, there were lodgings for nurses and for doctors at the hospital, as well as an Occupational Therapy building, a Preventorium for children of patients, and a school where they attended classes. In 1927, Hamilton County took over operation of the hospital.
In 1945, the complex was renamed Dunham Hospital in honor of Dr. Henry Kennon Dunham, one of the country’s leading researchers into the causes and cures of tuberclosis and director of the hospital from 1909 to 1940. The 1940s finally brought a cure for tuberculosis—penicillin and other antibiotics were surer remedies than fresh air, surgically collapsed lungs, and other treatments that had been used at Dunham.
By 1967, the hospital had only 168 patients and the decision was made to close it in January 1971. The last patient left in June of that year, and the property reverted from the county back to the city of Cincinnati. Many suggestions were made for the property—people suggested it for the site of a new St. Francis Hospital, or as the local offices of the National Institute of Science and Health. It was also briefly considered as a place for the Army to hold war games.
But people in Price Hill saw it as the perfect place to provide recreation opportunities the community lacked. So, the main hospital building and many of the other structures were torn down in 1973 to make way for playing fields at what was to become Dunham Recreation Complex. Several of the buildings were left standing, including the Nurses’ Building and the Occupational Therapy Building, to house recreation center programs. A nine-hole golf course was built, along with several baseball diamonds.
The Nurses’ Building was torn down when the recreation programs were moved to the other cluster of buildings that remain from Dunham Hospital, the Preventorium and school on the eastern side of the complex, which was also known as Allen House during the years the county's welfare department used it to temporarily house children with no other place to go. The Preventorium is now the location of many of Dunham Rec Center's programs, including the Seniors program and classes for children and adults.
The Occupational Therapy Building still stands, on the hill near the golf course, and over the years it has been home to the Sunset Players theatre group and Tiger Lily Press, a cooperative of printmakers. Recent damage to the historic building has caused the Sunset Players to relocate, though they do hope to return to the building’s auditorium.
In 1879, the Guerley Farm in Green Township became the site of the Branch Hospital for Contagious Diseases. Fifteen tuberculosis patients at Cincinnati Hospital (now University) were transferred to the new Branch Hospital because tuberculosis had just recently been identified as a communicable disease. The farm’s proximity to Potter’s Field, a city cemetery, may have been part of the decision to locate the hospital at that site.
By 1909, tuberculosis was on the rise in Cincinnati and a bond issue was passed to fund construction of additional buildings at
