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Chimborazo Park - Once the Confederacy's largest hospital

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Real Estate Broker/Owner with Equity First Realty VA BKR# 0225058489

Chimborazo Park - Once the Confederacy's largest hospital

As the Confederate's government seat during the Civil War, Richmond also held claim to the Confederacy's largest hospital known as Chimborazo. Dr. James McCaw established Chimborazo Hospital to help ease the burden of ill-equipped medical facilities that were popping up throughout the city. It eventually became the model for modern hospitals as we know today.

Sitting on 40 acres at the end of East Broad Street on Chimborazo Hill, the facility cared for more than 78,000 during the course of the war from 1861 to 1865. While the images of the wounded during the Civil War may involve, for some, those of Scarlett O'Hara standing surrounded by the sick, maimed, and dying soldiers who lay upon the hot clay ground in the classic film, Gone With The Wind, Chimborazo presented a different portrait of prepared structures ready to assist incoming soldiers in need.

Throughout the city, there were nearly 100 hospitals hastily formed, in various buildings and businesses, to care for Confederate soldiers. While most of them were not equipped for medicine and rehabilitative services, each of them exceeded their building’s occupancy limit, hindering the ability to care and save. At the insistence of Dr. McCaw, who was also the Professor of Chemistry at the Medical College of Virginia, the land at Chimborazo Hill was used to build structures designated to administer proper care to the soldiers. Chimborazo Hospital soon grew to become the largest hospital, even in the world at that time. Due to his high standards for this hospital, Dr. McCaw brought in top-trained physicians and efficient stewards. So well-managed was this facility, the mortality rate was less than 11%. 

Dr. McCaw's example of planning, routine service, efficiency, and care of his staff and the slaves who supported the hospital, formed the basis of current medical administration. Even as patients' conditions improved, they were given the tasks to help clean and maintain their areas, as well as air out their bedding. The reputation of the facility’s management expanded beyond the post, as
the Medical College of Virginia formed an alliance; some students were given the opportunity to gain practical experience at the hospital.

There were approximately 150 wooden buildings with enhanced ventilation, easing the stress of the wounded and the caretakers. Rev. John Jasper, one of the city's (and nationally) well-known, gifted preachers who was also a slave, was granted permission by his owner to relieve the duty of overtaxed white chaplains at Chimborazo and other hospitals in the city. Rev. Jasper, later known for his stirring sermon given at Sixth Mount Zion Baptist Church on Duval Street, "De Sun Do Move", was also paid by Confederate authorities for his service at the hospitals.

Over the years after the war, many of the buildings, in which soldiers were cared according to their home state, were demolished, torn for firewood, and burned. A few, for a very short time, were used as schoolhouses for free slaves. The grounds, now known as "Chimborazo Park" as well as "Richmond National Battlefield Park", are now managed by the National Park Service. The Chimborazo Medical Museum and Visitor's Center, which houses wartime medical artifacts, including surgical kits, apothecary bottles, and photographs, and a gift shop, was built in 1909 as a Federal weather station.

One of the museum's key features is the spacious diorama of the hospital during the war. Major streets such as Williamsburg Road, Broad Street, and Main are featured, along with the topography of the city near the James. It's a very large and useful highlight to the museum visit, taking up the full space of the designated room. To further engage the visitor, the museum also presents a highly-recommended 20-minute video which explains Chimborazo Hospital's role in the war, as well as the service of other hospitals in the city during the war.

Also featured here is Richmond’s own Statue of Liberty, a smaller replica of the original, donated in 1950 by the Boy Scouts of America.

This park is on the National Registry of Historic Places. The Medical Museum and Visitor's Center is open daily from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.

Article reposted by permission: Tonya Rice, examiner.com

   
   
       

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Marcus E. Rice - Principal Broker, CDPE

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