Central Branch, National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers

Dayton's veterans' campus began in 1867 as the Central Branch of the National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers. It sits on a ridge overlooking the Miami valley, about three miles west of downtown. The listed district covers 261.2 acres, including the medical center grounds and the 98.2-acre National Cemetery. The original plan centered on a parade ground with a bandstand, ringed by barracks, headquarters, a natural grotto and officers' quarters. That layout survives, along with the 1868 Gothic Revival gate lodge, an ornate eastern entrance and a road system set up in the 1880s to handle heavy visitor traffic. Buildings range from frame staff quarters in Tudor, Queen Anne and Italianate styles to three-story Colonial Revival patient care buildings of the 1930s and 1940s. The cemetery holds roughly 35,700 full-casket burials around a tall Soldiers Monument. The district is recognized for its role in veterans' care, medicine, government policy, landscape design and architecture between 1867 and 1952. It still serves veterans today.