Prior to 1905, physicians in the Upper Miami Valley performed surgery in their offices or, in emergencies or serious illness, on patients' kitchen tables, where cleanliness was difficult to maintain and infections and unnecessary deaths were common. A solution came when Mrs. Julia Ball Thayer donated twenty thousand dollars to build a new hospital in Piqua in honor of her brother D.L.C. Ball, stipulating that it be built on the abandoned Park Avenue Cemetery site and operated by a Hospital Association of twelve trustees, half appointed by her as life trustees and half by the Mayor of Piqua; the city was to extend a sanitary sewer line to the site and support a levy for maintenance with a minimum return of $2,500. The Piqua City Council accepted her donation and conditions on June 07, 1907, and a half-mill levy was adopted so Ball Memorial Hospital would be free to the poor of Piqua and the surrounding area. Designed by E.H. Hart & Company of Columbus and built by Airhart M. Fry at a cost of $18,000, with an additional four thousand dollars spent on furnishings and equipment, the Georgian Revival hospital had a three-story center with two-story wings and included male and female wards with five beds each, thirteen private beds, a consultation room, an operating room, a laboratory, an elevator, and offices. The Memorial Hospital Association of Piqua, Ohio, was incorporated on April 27, 1905, met formally for the first time in May 1905, and elected industrialist General William P. Orr as its first president, a position he held until his death in 1912. Julia Beatrice Ball Thayer died in May 1905 before the hospital was completed and never came from her native New Hampshire to see it; her only connection to Piqua had been through her brother DeLos C. Ball, who operated a linseed oil mill there from 1855 to 1870. Ball Memorial Hospital was formally dedicated on Thanksgiving Day, November 30, 1905, with Mayor Lucius C. Cron accepting the gift for the citizens of Piqua, and its rooms were furnished and dedicated as memorials to local citizens and organizations. The staff included chief nurse Miss Agnes Miller, matron Mrs. Alice Brown, and first superintendent Miss Mary Melville, and the first patient was admitted on December 07, 1905. The hospital later expanded with an east wing in 1927, a maternity ward in a new north wing in 1938, a fourth floor in 1941, major additions in 1959 and 1969, when the original facade was demolished, and a support services wing in 1983. In 1986, Piqua Memorial Medical Center merged with Dettmer and Stouder Memorial Hospitals to form Upper Valley Medical Center, and the Park Avenue hospital closed after the new facility opened between Piqua and Troy on 25-A in 1998; UVMC had broken ground in May 1996 on the former Dettmer Hospital campus for a 222,000 square foot hospital designed by NBBJ architects of Columbus and built by Turner Construction Company, whose grand opening was held in July 1998.