City Hospital started as a dream of Boniface DeRoo, a resident of Middlebury. Upon his death, DeRoo left approximately $10,000 for the establishment of Akron’s first hospital.
“the balance of my estate, real and personal, to the city of Akron, to be held in trust and appropriated by said city for the buying of real estate and the erection of necessary buildings and maintenance of the same for a city hospital, wherein invalids and infirm persons, without distinction of race, nationality, color or sex, may be provided for without charge or compensation in case of inability to pay for the same.”
More than nine years elapsed after DeRoo’s death in 1883 before a group of 12 men organized the City Hospital Association. The association purchased the Bartges Homestead and opened the hospital 1892.