Central Hospital. Central Hospital was founded in 1957 in a house at 331 Sherbourne Street which had been built in 1875 for Robert T. Gooderham. The property was purchased in 1921 by the Canadian National Institute For The Blind (established in 1918) for use as a women's residence. The "Clarkewood Residence" moved to Bayview Avenue when the CNIB consolidated its operations there in 1956. The property was then purchased by doctors Paul and John Rekai, who had immigrated to Toronto from Hungary in 1950. In May 1957 they opened a 32 bed private hospital with a multilingual staff committed to providing health care to people of diverse cultural backgrounds. Their success led to the replacement of the Gooderham House with a new 176 bed public hospital that was opened in September 1969.

see Toronto Plaques: Central Hospital