Former Franciscan Hospital, Now a Health Center
1950 Mount St. Marys Drive, Nelsonville, OH 45764
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Now operating as the Mary Hill Center providing health services. Public access to general areas only; not a tourist site.
Access
Wheelchair OK
Modern medical-office accessibility throughout the rehabilitated building
Equipment
No Photos
Est. 1950 · Franciscan Healthcare Heritage · Sisters of St. Francis Ministry · Adaptive Reuse for Community Health
Mount St. Mary's Hospital was established in 1949 by the Sisters of St. Francis of Stella Niagara, with the first sisters arriving on October 10, 1949. The founding group included Mother Lidwina Jacobs and Sisters Lindtrudis Johannpotter, Constantia Crotty, Celine Paul, and Annette Mumm, according to the Sisters of St. Francis archives. The hospital opened to patients in 1950 and served southeastern Ohio for the following three decades.
The Sisters of St. Francis ran the hospital from 1949 to 1979. According to a 1988 tribute essay published by Betty Jo Parsley, the sisters' care for patients was the defining feature of the institution during these years. Following the Franciscan administration, Doctors Hospital Columbus acquired corporate control and renamed the facility Doctors Hospital of Nelsonville. The hospital later passed through other ownership changes before closing.
In June 2017, OhioHealth donated the 70,000-square-foot building and four acres of land to Integrated Services for Behavioral Health. The facility was rehabilitated as the Mary Hill Center, with Hopewell Health Centers as the first tenant providing primary care, behavioral health, and dental services. The building's institutional core, an addition completed in 1973, has been adapted for current medical use.
Sources
The Mount St. Mary's folklore is unusually gentle. The Shadowlands-era account, which appears to have circulated locally for decades before its compilation, describes a Franciscan sister who tended the rose gardens around the hospital and whose room was filled with roses on the day of her death. The account holds that the scent of roses can still be smelled in the administration office that was once her quarters.
A secondary thread describes a recurring nightly walk by the founding sisters during the institution's operating years — a procession that, according to the folklore, would move through the corridors after patient rooms had been closed. The legend holds that the sisters' procession could also be heard in advance of a patient death.
This material is folkloric. No published reporting, historical society documentation, or named investigation groups have substantiated the rose-scent or procession accounts. The Sisters of St. Francis archives document the founding of the hospital and the names of the early sisters, but do not address paranormal claims. With the building now operating as a working health-care center, this is folklore preserved in regional memory rather than a current visitable phenomenon.
Notable Entities
View the exterior of the former Mount St. Mary's Hospital, now the Mary Hill Center providing primary, behavioral, and dental health services through Hopewell Health Centers and Integrated Services for Behavioral Health. The 1950 building remains; interior access is restricted to patients and staff.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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