There are many similarities within the histories of The Lutheran Home
at Topton and Tressler Lutheran Services, two of the organizations
whose ministries Diakon Lutheran Social Ministries continues.
Both began in the 1800s. Both began as orphanages. And both later
developed services for people of all ages, as the use of orphanages
ended.
Both also had an identically named building—the Annie L. Lowry Memorial
Hospital.
Today, the former hospital on the Topton campus houses some of Diakon’s
children services. The building at the former Tressler home was razed
some years after the state’s 1963 purchase of the campus for use as
a youth development center.
The first Annie L. Lowry Memorial Hospital was established on Tressler’s
Loysville, Pa., campus in 1910. A hospital had already been built
in response to the diphtheria epidemic of the time. While donations
had been flowing in, the cost was nevertheless significant.
Then the home’s staff received an inquiry from an attorney who represented
the estate of Mrs. Lowry. A Philadelphia resident and member of the
Reformed Episcopal Church, she had bequeathed about $600,000 for charitable
work. The attorney’s wife had been a Lutheran as a child and was used
to making yearly contributions to the Tressler home.
Thus originated a memorial gift of $8,500. Earlier contributions from
congregations and other individuals were then used to furnish the
hospital.
Within months, the attorney also made a contribution to the Topton
home. That campus’ Annie L. Lowry Memorial Hospital was finished in
1911. The two-story building cost $5,500 and served as the home’s
infirmary until 1956 when “bed patients” were relocated to the then-newly
opened Caum Memorial Home in Reading (which later became a Diakon
assisted living facility; those services ended in 2005, with hopes
of the site becoming a center for Diakon’s regional-based community
services ).
A second hospital building, which maintained the memorial to Annie
L. Lowry, was constructed on the Tressler campus in the early 1920s
when health officials recommended the medical facility be moved farther
from dormitories. Parts of the original hospital building were then
incorporated into a girls’ dormitory, whose construction was funded
by the Women of the Allegheny Synod.
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