If you were transported back in time to Union Street (now 12th Street) in Toledo circa 1874, you might be forgiven for not recognizing the wooden structure at number 171 as a hospital.

It looked more like a modest house. It had no city water and no electricity. Private rooms were unheard of. It had been founded in that year by an interdenominational group of women known as the Women’s Christian Association. The facility was initially known simply as “the City Hospital.”

From this very modest beginning, a large and vibrant institution has grown. Fast-forward 150 years and stand before ProMedica Toledo Hospital on North Cove Boulevard and you’ll be looking at the largest building in Toledo, one that has more floor space (2,837,257 square feet, not including outbuildings) than the Empire State Building (2,768,591 square feet) and employs 4,800 people.

If there is a constant in Toledo Hospital’s one and a half century history, it’s one of relentless change. And a lot has changed since 1874. The hospital quickly grew out of its Union Street building, moved several times, and changed its name to the Protestant Hospital of Toledo and eventually to its current name.

In 1895, the hospital served as home for a nursing school called the Toledo Training School for Nurses. One of the most dramatic events in the hospital’s history occurred in January, 1916, when the student nurses went on strike to protest their treatment by the superintendent of the school, Margaret Wallace. Doctors and druggists soon went on strike in support of the student nurses.

The strike ended when Ms. Wallace resigned as superintendent in March, 1916. In a colorful comment about the strike that appeared in the June 12, 1916, edition of The Blade, Ms. Wallace referred to the striking student nurses as “hussies, vixens, and ungrateful wretches.”

The nursing school was eventually dissolved in 1988.

In 1908, the hospital partnered with the YWCA in a fund-raising drive that collected $90,000 for the hospital and enabled it to reduce its indebtedness.

The original North Cove Boulevard building of the current Toledo Hospital, now known as the Legacy wing, was built in 1930. It was a considerable leap of faith for the hospital to undertake, since at the time the Great Depression was under way, and the city of Toledo itself was on the verge of bankruptcy. Though there were serious cutbacks in wages, benefits, and employees, the hospital survived.

Four other additions have expanded the hospital considerably in recent years: the Harris McIntosh Tower, the Jobst Tower, the Renaissance Tower, and the Generations of Care Tower.

In 1986, the hospital was acquired by ProMedica, a Toledo-based nonprofit health-care conglomerate that operates 11 hospitals in Ohio and Michigan and currently employs 56,000 people.

“Today, the hospital gets 95,000 emergency room visits and performs over 30,000 surgeries a year,” said Toledo Hospital president Dawn Buskey. “We’re a Level 1 Trauma Center. Our people show up every day to take care of the community at times when they are in highest need. We can have up to 72 babies in the NICU. Little miracles happen here all the time.”

Some of those little miracles are evident in the unusually long tenure of many hospital employees. Ms. Buskey, for example, began her hospital career as a candystriper at a hospital near Cleveland. Then 32 years ago, she began work at ProMedica as a medical staff coordinator. She rose through the ranks and became president of the hospital in 2021.

Ms. Buskey is far from being the only employee with more than three decades of service to the same company. There are others who have worked at Toledo Hospital for four and even five decades. Such employment longevity is unusual. According to Career Sidekick, a popular career advice website, Americans change jobs on the average about every three years.

The longest-tenured Toledo Hospital employee, plant operations manager Raymond Vining, knows more about the hospital’s buildings and systems than anyone — and with good reason: He’s been employed there for 55 years.

Mr. Vining began his career in 1969 when he was a student at St. Francis de Sales High School. His first job was mowing the lawn around the hospital. Given his age, he needed a work permit to take the job.

Today he supervises the 25 people who make sure that the hospital’s HVAC systems, pumps, and powerhouse are all in working order.

“Most of my day is spent problem-solving,” Mr. Vining said. “Our job is to work as a team and come up with solutions. I really enjoy what I do. I like challenges. That’s why I stay.”

It’s a job that seems to run in his family. Mr. Vining’s grandfather was the assistant chief of facilities at the time.

“I worked with him for seven years,” Mr. Vining recalls. “He was a colorful guy who used to work on lake freighters. He taught me a lot.”

Mary Plenzler is another person who’s worked for the hospital for a third of its 150 years. Her career there began in 1974 when she was hired as a medical technologist intern and weekend phlebotomist.

“I was in a 3+1 program at UT where my senior year was basically an internship at the hospital,” she said. ”I then got my bachelor’s degree in medical technology, went into microbiology, and never left.”

Today Ms. Plenzler is a medical technologist in the microbiology laboratory. Her job has changed dramatically during her tenure.

“When I first started, our laboratory was the only one in the city with a computer system,” she said. “Today it can identify and find things much faster than before. The number of compliance requirements we have to deal with has increased significantly. We have to be sure we don’t compromise our patient’s health information. It was much less intense in the 1970s. We thought we were busy then, but it’s much more intense now. Also, the degree of interdepartmental cooperation has increased. We now work with our pharmacists and infectious disease physicians on a daily basis.”

Another one of Toledo Hospital’s longest-serving employees is Rose Cross, who today works as a learning and development specialist guiding nurses through their training.

When she celebrated 35 years at Toledo Hospital in 2021, she wrote on social media, “I am especially proud of our organization's involvement in the community, especially in the area of addressing the social determinants of health. I think that will go a long way in making our community more healthy and vibrant. It is my pleasure to work at ProMedica Toledo Hospital and I look forward to seeing what the coming years bring."

Now, with nearly 40 years of service under her belt, Ms. Cross’ positive attitude toward her work is still evident.

“I love what I do,” she said. “I love the people I work with, and I think Toledo Hospital has been very helpful in the way they take care of their employees. It’s not just the community outside we work with — it’s the community inside. We take care of our own. I’m happy doing what I’m doing. I love to teach and interact with people. I do have frustrating days, but any day I am alive and here is really good.”

To celebrate its sesquicentennial, the hospital has set up several displays of old photos, antique medical instruments, and important documents from days gone by. Walking through them is a lesson in how far the practice of medicine at Toledo Hospital has progressed.

The hospital has also set up a dedicated webpage (https://www.promedica.org/yourhealth/toledo-hospital-150-anniversary) where employees, patients, and volunteers can share their Toledo Hospital experience.

The pandemic is cited repeatedly by hospital employees as a time when the staff pulled together to cope with an unprecedented crisis.

“I am particularly proud of the way we responded to the pandemic,” Ms. Buskey said. “We were one of four regional referral centers in Ohio. The Ohio National Guard was deployed at the hospital to support us with COVID testing and light patient care. We integrated them into our health-care team. When their deployment was over, they gave us one of their challenge coins to thank us for integrating with their team and saving people’s lives. That meant a lot to us.”

Mr. Vining recalls that coping with the pandemic was particularly challenging for his plant operations team.

“The Centers for Disease Control kept changing their guidance on air filtration, which is essential for limiting the spread of the virus in the hospital,” he said. “We had to work hard to keep up.”

Since then, the pace of change has not slowed.

“We now have a comprehensive robotics program,” said Ms. Buskey. “We have a large fleet of robots we use every single day. We are a premier site for Intuitive Surgical and we bring in people from all over the country to see their technology work. Our patients recover and are discharged more quickly. We can operate on complex head and neck cancers with our robots. And we can be a partner in a patient’s care in a smaller facility.”

But even as the practice of medicine at Toledo Hospital continues to change, its objectives remain the same as they’ve always been.

As Ms. Buskey put it, “Our long term goals are focusing on high quality compassionate care and being on the cutting edge of advancement.”

First Published June 1, 2024, 11:00 a.m.