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Seacrest Studio, a partnership with the Ryan Seacrest Foundation, opened on November 18, 2013 and broadcasts via WKID33 to patient TVs throughout the hospital. Patients can call in to the show or visit the studio in person to play games and meet visitors, such as members of the Cincinnati Reds or Bengals. Seacrest Studio is part of Child Life and Integrative Care.
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William Cooper Procter, president of the new board of trustees, asked Dr. Kenneth Blackfan, who was the first Benjamin K. Rachford Professor and Chair of Pediatrics at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, to form a committee to plan and select a new hospital site in 1922. The goal was to locate it close to the College of Medicine and City Hospital.
When Dr. Blackfan resigned in 1923, planning for the new hospital became the responsibility of Dr. A. Graeme Mitchell, the second Benjamin K. Rachford Professor and Chair of Pediatrics. Between 1924 and 1926, Dr. Mitchell designed the building, organized the staff, and developed an affiliation agreement with the UC College of Medicine.
The third hospital building (Location H) opened on November 18, 1926 and was located on Elland and Bethesda Avenues, now Albert Sabin Way in close proximity to the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine. The building was five stories high, had 200 beds and included departments for X-ray, hydrotherapy, heliotherapy and physiotherapy; a gymnasium, laboratories, and a chapel and playroom. The total cost to construct the hospital was $1.2 million. The dedication ceremony was attended by 2,000 people.
In 2002 the hospital was closed and torn down to make way for the William Cooper Procter Research Pavilion and the Clinical Sciences Pavilion located on Albert Sabin Way.
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The History Timeline is located in the Clinical Sciences Pavilion, a 15-story, 445,000 square foot translational science facility that opened on June 12, 2015. The timeline honors some of our historic accomplishments starting in the 1930s with the establishment of the Children’s Hospital Research Foundation.
On the wall, you will see such names as Dr. Josef Warkany who studied birth defects, Dr. Marilyn Hughes Gaston who studied sickle cell disease, Dr. Samuel Rapoport who improved the existing methods of preserving whole blood and Dr. Beatrice Lampkin who made important contributions to the development of new chemotherapy regimens that improved outcomes for children with leukemia.
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The Rainbow Café is named after a coffee/snack shop established by the Cooperative Society in 1952. Known as the Rainbow Room, it remained open for over 40 years. Initially, members of the Cooperative Society, Cincinnati Children’s oldest volunteer organization, cooked and served the meals, donating all proceeds to the hospital.
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The original entrance arch to the 1926 hospital building that was located on Elland and Bethesda Avenues was carefully removed and installed in the research courtyard. With its religious carvings and inscribed words, “I Will Bind the Broken” and “I Will Strengthen the Sick,” it symbolizes the historic mission of Cincinnati Children’s to provide both physical and emotional healing to its patients.
The centerpiece of the arch is a statue carved in marble of the Good Shepherd that was donated by the Episcopal Bishop Boyd Vincent in May 1926.
According to an original letter dated May 11, 1926, from Vincent to William Cooper Procter, president of the Children’s Hospital Board of Trustees, the “statue is to be placed above the entrance to the above-named hospital as a monument to the public, is not to be resold and is to remain the permanent property of the hospital for permanent exhibition.”
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When the Children’s Hospital Research Foundation Library opened in May 1931, it boasted 2,800 bound volumes devoted to pediatrics, physiology, biochemistry, etc. and was open to the Fellows of the Foundation, attending physicians, interns, and other personnel of Children’s Hospital. Medical students were allowed the use of the reading room during library hours.
The first librarian was Louise Sias who came to Children’s in the late 1930s and worked for the next 30 years building the library from scratch.
In 1989, the library was named in honor of former Chief of Staff and B.K. Rachford chair, Edward L. Pratt, MD. The Edward L. Pratt Research Library—and its librarians—serve the faculty and staff of Cincinnati Children’s remotely while supporting the health system’s strategic goals in patient care, teaching, and research.
Today the library is known as the Mitchell-Nelson History Library, Archives and Museum. Named to honor two pillars in pediatrics, Drs. A. Graeme Mitchell and Waldo Nelson.
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The impetus for having a dedicated research foundation came from Albert Graeme Mitchell, MD, who came to Cincinnati Children's in 1924, and was the second B.K. Rachford Professor of Pediatrics. Mitchell convinced William Cooper Procter and the board of trustees about the importance and necessity of having research associated with the hospital.
On January 4, 1928, Procter announced his intention to donate $2.5 million to build and endow the Children’s Hospital Research Foundation. This has led to research and innovations in areas such as polio, COVID-19, ebola, AIDS and rotavirus vaccines. It also sparked the development of the first practical heart-lung machine, artificial surfactant and the world’s first connected set of organoids.
A news clipping from the Cincinnati Post, January 5, 1928, sums it up best: “William Cooper Procter’s gift of $2,500,000 is for the children of the world a challenge to all diseases that kill or maim them. With this money, doctors will be employed to think and work to the end that every disease that destroys children may be eradicated from the earth….”
The Children's Hospital Research Foundation (CHRF) was dedicated by the Right Reverend Boyd Vincent, Episcopal Bishop Emeritus on May 20, 1931, to great fanfare.
The original Research Foundation building is the oldest building on the Burnet Campus and is the site of the first Sabin Sunday, April 24, 1960, when over 20,000 children sipped their “Sunday Punch” of two drops of vaccine in a teaspoon of cherry syrup. The plastic spoon served as a souvenir of this historic event.
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The Rotary Polio Plus sculpture depicts a Rotary member immunizing a child against polio with other children looking on. Dr. Albert Sabin and his team of researchers developed the vaccine in the Research Foundation and Clinic building.
The Rotary Club organized millions of volunteers and supplied large quantities of polio vaccine to support the public health initiative. The Rotary Polio Plus sculpture, created by Glenna Goodacre in 1991, honors the achievements of working toward eradicating the disease globally and was presented to the hospital in 2001 by the Cincinnati Chapter.
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As Cincinnati Children’s grew, so did its need for nurses. On February 1, 1906, the first training school for nursing was opened.
Vincent Hall, the dormitory for nurses of Cincinnati Children’s stood near the site of the North Parking Garage and brought nursing students living in separate buildings under one roof. The building, the second on what was then the new Burnet campus, was a gift from Mr. and Mrs. William Cooper Procter who donated $250,000 for its construction. The building was designed by Stanley Matthews and E. O. Elzner, architects.
The dormitory, which opened in 1928, was named in honor of the Right Reverend Bishop Boyd Vincent of the Episcopal Diocese of Southern Ohio and second president of the hospital’s board of trustees from 1907-1921.
Designed in the collegiate Gothic style of architecture, it accommodated up to 85 nursing students. The second and third floors had a total of 72 individual bedrooms. By the 1930s, a wing was added to increase the housing capacity to 125 nurses. Five groups of students lived in Vincent Hall: graduate staff, general duty nurses, graduate students, student nurses and nurses’ aides.
The residence boasted a ground-floor recreation area that was used for dancing, gymnastics, games and parties. Part of the basement was used for roller skating. On the main floor was a formal living room that opened out onto a grass terrace that overlooked the tennis courts. Over time, Vincent Hall became the place for holiday parties, volunteer get-togethers, auxiliary meetings and the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center craft show.
It is estimated that 20,000 graduate and nursing students lived in Vincent Hall before the nursing school closed and the residence was demolished in 1978.
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On the second-floor entrance to Location C hangs a large, ceramic Della Robbia-style plaque of a swaddled infant, one arm outstretched with an open palm. The infant is white, in sharp relief against a round, blue background, which is divided into sections like spokes of a wheel. It is one of two commissioned by Mr. and Mrs. Harry Whiting Brown for the Children’s Hospital built in 1926 in memory of Edna Brown.
Drs. James and Betty Sutherland, members of the pediatric faculty from 1956-1982, found both sculptures at a yard sale and immediately recognized their significance. They donated one to Cincinnati Children’s and the other to the Cincinnati Art Museum.
The sculpture, which was created at Rookwood Pottery by nationally known artist Clement J. Barnhorn, is modeled after the work of the Italian Renaissance artist Andrea Della Robbia who lived from 1435-1525.
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On the second floor of location C is a Rookwood tile backsplash that was part of a decorative water fountain with swans. The backsplash was uncovered in 1994 during a renovation of the 1926 Cincinnati Children’s Hospital building, then restored and preserved to feature its three swans standing in a pond with cattails. A gift of the Junior Co-operative Society, it was installed sometime between 1928 and 1929.
According to a copy of meeting minutes of the Cooperative Society of February 1929: “The Junior Co-operative Society has also installed a beautiful drinking fountain in the Hospital, a lasting memorial to all their members."
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Cincinnati Children’s Gift Shop dates to 1910 with the founding of the Junior Co-Operative Society. The Junior Co-Ops officially opened the hospital’s first gift shop in 1942 with the motto, "The more you shop, the more we give." Members volunteer many hours each year, with proceeds donated back to Cincinnati Children’s.
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Cincinnati Children’s Center for Spiritual and Grief Care has provided emotional and spiritual support to the hospital community since its inception in 1883. It has ensured that people of all spiritual beliefs and religions feel welcome, safe, valued and respected. The Chapel of the Holy Child has stood at the center of providing that support since 1926.
The Multifaith Chapel in Location A provides space for quiet reflection and meditation. Chaplains work as part of the pediatric healthcare team and are available 24 hours a day to patients, families and employees. Cincinnati Children's has provided clinical pastoral education training since 1988 and in 2005 created a dedicated bereavement coordinator position to improve our approach to the end-of-life process.
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The Ronald McDonald House of Greater Cincinnati has its roots in the Children’s Family House, Inc., which began as a small meeting of parents and physicians on October 9, 1978, to discuss a low cost “home away from home” for parents and family members of seriously sick children being treated at Cincinnati Children’s. This group of parents and families were known as the Children’s Oncology Parent Endeavor.
Two of the proponents of this meeting were Beatrice Lampkin, MD, and Paul McEnery, MD. In 1978, Drs. Lampkin and McEnery recognized a need for parents and families to have affordable housing while their children were treated at Cincinnati Children’s. They were involved with the planning and fundraising efforts to open what would become The Ronald McDonald House. This grassroots campaign ultimately raised $1.3 million.
In 1980, Cincinnati area McDonald’s owners and operators pledged $200,000 for construction, and a 99-year lease of Cincinnati Children’s land was secured for $1 from the medical center’s Board of Trustees. These two seeds became the tree that would secure affordable housing for those families with seriously ill kids who were treated at the hospital.
Ground was broken on November 15, 1981, at 229 Erkenbrecher Avenue, and one year later, the 21-room house was dedicated on November 14, 1982 with 450 people in attendance. The House officially opened on December 1. No longer would families have to sleep in chairs, on sofas in waiting rooms or on the floor. Home-cooked meals could be made as well.
The Ronald McDonald House of Greater Cincinnati, the 20th in the nation at the time, provides a convenient home to families of seriously ill children with room for up to 177 families.
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