Veterans Hospital No. 100

World War I created the need for increased medical care for returning soldiers. Veterans Hospital No. 100, a five hundred-bed neuropsychiatric facility that opened in 1924 on the grounds of Fort Custer, originally consisted of twenty-two Neo-Georgian structures in a crescent shaped arrangement. Like other Veterans Bureau facilities of the time, the hospital was built from standardized floor plans at a cost of nearly $3 million. When erected on the grounds of Fort Custer, trenches, sand dunes, and barren soil dominated the site. Between 1927 and 1930, ninety-four hundred trees were planted on the 675-acre site, including English walnut trees, transplanted from the Battle Creek Sanitarium, that were originally grown at Mt. Vernon, Virginia.