1915 time capsule found at Mt. Sinai demolition site
Last Friday, as the B&B Wrecking & Excavating crew demolished the former Mt.SinaiMedicalCenter, they uncovered a valuable relic from the past.
At the cornerstone of the building, workers found a dented, but amazingly secure time capsule planted there on June 6, 1915, by the hospital’s founders.
Inside the 2-ft. x 2-ft. copper box are a number of documents and newspaper articles. The site manager, who was overjoyed by his crew’s find, delivered the box to Case Western Reserve University President Edward H. Hundert. It will soon become the property of The Mt. Sinai Foundation, headed by Mitchell Balk.
According to Ken Basch, vice president of Campus Planning and Operations at Case, the contents of the time capsule include meeting minutes, articles of incorporation, the original construction contract, and newspapers of the day. Among the newspapers are The Jewish Independent, The Plain Dealer, The News and The Press.
Also in the box is a bound booklet titled “The Federation of the Jewish Charities of Cleveland, 1914,” listing its subscribers; a blank pledge card to the Jewish Hospital Association; and fund-raising campaign materials, including one expressing the need to have a kosher hospital for Orthodox Jews.
“Dr. Hundert and I discussed that, at the very least, there are several good history lessons contained in the time capsule, not to mention the underpinnings of why a Jewish sponsored-hospital was founded in Cleveland,” notes Balk.
“Finding this time capsule on the site of the former Mt.SinaiMedicalCenter was a wonderful surprise,” says Hundert. “The documents contained in it will undoubtedly be of great value to researchers studying the beginnings of the hospital and Cleveland’s Jewish community in the early years of the twentieth century. I am eager to learn more about the contents once historians have had the opportunity to examine them.”
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