Rutherford Hospital / Middle Tennessee Medical Center

The hospital was the end of an experiment. From 1924 to 1928 the Commonwealth Fund ran one of its four child-health demonstrations in Rutherford County, under Dr. Harry S. Mustard, with children's and maternity clinics and health lessons in the schools. The staff doubled as the county health department. The 1927 hospital followed, and medical and nursing students from Vanderbilt came to learn rural public health practice. In 1931 the fund also gave the county a health department building, a thanks for its central place in the fund's rural work.

What the plaque says

Rutherford Hospital / Middle Tennessee Medical Center Rutherford Hospital: On May 2, 1927, Rutherford Hospital opened to serve both whites and African-Americans. Simeon B. Christy, a local merchant, obtained funding for the hospital from the Commonwealth Fund of New York. The fund paid $161,620 for construction of the hospital, chartered as a general welfare private corporation. Frank K. Houston, a Woodbury, TN native and a New York banker, also was a benefactor of the hospital. The hospital received accreditation from the American College of Surgeons in 1929. Middle Tennessee Medical Center: In 1982 the hospital's named changed to Middle Tennessee Medical Center. In 1986 St. Thomas and Baptist hospitals of Nashville bought MTMC for $40,000,000; this was the first hospital in the U.S. to be jointly owned by Catholic and Protestant institutions. Christy-Houston foundation was trustee of the fund created by this sale. MTMC, owned by Ascension Health, relocated to 1700 Medical Center Parkway in 2010. The original hospital was razed in 2012. In 2013 the institution became St. Thomas Rutherford Hospital.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Stones River National Battlefield — 3.4 mi
  The Murfreesboro battlefield of December 1862, with a national cemetery built by Black soldiers, a Trail of Tears route and the story of the freedmen's settlement called Cemetery.
• Tennessee Walking Horse National Celebration — 25 mi
  The Shelbyville show grounds where the Tennessee Walking Horse has been crowned world grand champion each late summer since 1939, and where the practice of soring is part of the story.
• Henry Horton State Park — 25 mi
  A Duck River park on Governor Henry Horton's former farm in Marshall County, with a mill ruin from 1845, kayak floats and the grave of a governor the House declined to impeach.
• Fort Negley — 30 mi
  The largest inland stone fort of the Civil War, built in 1862 on St. Cloud Hill by more than 2,700 conscripted Black laborers, hundreds of whom died.

More markers nearby

• Tennessee College for Women — 0.3 mi
• Union University — 0.3 mi
• Joseph B. Palmer — 0.4 mi
• Middle Tennessee State Teachers College Training School — 0.4 mi