James Leveson Ross headed the syndicate which purchased the Dominion Coal Company from Henry Melville Whitney in 1901. He moved to Sydney with his wife and built a large estate called Dumbroe on King’s Road. The estate included a massive house with a large waterfront tennis court.
By 1910 he resigned from the Dominion Coal Company to retire and spend more time with his family. He died on September 20, 1913 in Montreal. All of his property was left to his only son, John, or Jack Ross.
Jack Ross had little interest in life on Cape Breton and his parents had been using Dumbroe as a summer property. During the First World War, when the need for medical care for wounded soldiers returning from the front was high, it became clear that the small cottage hospital that the steel plant had built, called Brookland, was not large enough to house sick workers and recovering soldiers. The City Hospital would not be completed until 1917 and Moxham hospital was already full of convalescing soldiers.
According to the Sydney Daily Post in 1919, “Soon after the commencement of the great war Jack Ross very generously offered at the disposal of the government for a hospital the building in question, which has been the home of his late Father Mr. James Ross. He furnished it with beds and bedding, … and drugs and other hospital paraphernalia so the institution would be known as the “Ross Memorial Hospital” (and) become a safe haven for soldiers from the battle fields of Europe.”
The building was made available for soldiers during the length of the war and for a period of time after the war had ended. As the first full year of peace passed, the need for beds in Ross Memorial Hospital significantly diminished. All the returning soldiers could be cared for in the Moxham Hospital.
This meant that there was a large facility that was already equipped for medical services left unused in a city that was desperately lacking medical facilities. This need was particularly felt during the 1918 Spanish Flu epidemic, which arrived in Sydney with its returning soldiers.
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At the time, the Sisters of Saint Martha were running the large St. Joseph’s Hospital in Glace Bay, which was acclaimed to be the most successful general hospital in the province.
The Sisters decided that they would take over the Ross Memorial Hospital and run it as a maternity hospital, or a laying in hospital. The women of Sydney would be able to deliver their babies in a hospital setting and recover there too. The Sisters, it was said, had made great success of every hospital they had been involved with and this would be no different.
The Sisters claimed that this was the perfect location. It was close to the orphanage at the time, which was also managed by the Sisters of Saint Martha. Ross Memorial Hospital was also right across the street from the Sisters’ present building. So the Sisters of Saint Martha purchased the Ross home from Jack Ross.
On 1 May 1920 the sisters opened Ross Memorial Hospital as a maternity hospital. By 1921 the services offered in the hospital had expanded to become a woman’s general hospital with room to accommodate 25 patients.
As demand for services in the hospital grew, the Sisters went back to Jack Ross and asked to acquire the small six-room cottage that was next to the hospital. The plan was to open this building as a nurses’ residence, which would free up beds within the hospital for patients. This also allowed the Sisters to establish an on-site nursing school.
The first class from the nursing school graduated in 1927. That same year a large barn on the property was purchased and completely renovated and expanded. This became the training school and the nurse’s residence. The cottage became the residence for some of the Sisters and some domestic staff.
By 1929, demand for care yet again outgrew the space that was available at Ross Memorial Hospital. A new wing was built on the original structure and the old building was remodelled. The number of available beds in the hospital increased to 40 adult beds and three pediatric cribs. The new building and renovation also sparked a name change. The facility was no longer Ross Memorial Hospital, instead it became St. Rita’s Hospital.
Again in 1943 the hospital was found to be too small for the needs of the community. The Sisters purchased the adjoining property of W.N. MacDonald. This included a large residence which was remodelled to become a maternity unit.
By 1949 the facilities were again proving to be too small. Funds were raised to build a large 162-bed hospital on the Old Exhibition Grounds. The new hospital was built through the pledges of the middle class and the poor in the community who paid 25 cents or a $1 a month to the hospital.
On 4 February 1951 a fire broke out in one of the hospital buildings, although which one is unclear. There is great debate as to whether the Ross’ former home burned or the house that had belonged to W.N. MacDonald. (I believe it was the MacDonald property that burned). The fire was caused by faulty wiring and all the patients were evacuated safely. The Sisters used whatever facilities they had left to them but the demand for the larger St. Rita’s hospital became paramount. The new St. Rita’s opened 29 April 1953 and the old facility was no longer needed. The old building was sold and run as a hotel from this point forward.
That is how one of Sydney largest homes went from a luxurious home to a convalescent home, to a maternity hospital, to a women’s hospital to a hotel, proving that adaptive reuse of heritage properties is not a new idea.
Vanessa Childs Rolls is a local historian who lives in Sydney. Her column appears monthly in the Cape Breton Post. She can be contacted at Childsrol[email protected]