An extremely large hospital facility constructed after the outbreak of war and first opened 17 October 1861. It was on land bounded by the present streets of Clay on the north, 30th on the west, 34th on the east, and the bottom of the hill on the south. Named for the hill on which it was located which was named after Mount Chimborazo in Ecuador. One of the largest of all military hospitals up to its time. Normal occupancy was about 3,000. It had about 120 buildings in all. Those for patients were divided into five divisions. Divisions were designated for Virginia, Kentucky, Missouri, Tennessee, Maryland, at the beginning, but names varied at different periods. It had its own ice house, natural springs, soup house, bakery, soap factory. It operated its own farms, beef and goat herds, canal trading boat and had a Medical staff about 45.

Phoebe Yates Levy Pender was born to a well-to-do Jewish family in Charleston in 1823. In 1862 she was a middle-aged widow living in Georgia and moved to Richmond, to become the esteemed administrator, of the Confederacy’s chief medical complex Chimborazo Hospital which served over 77,000 patients during the war. She served as its head from November 1862 until the fall of Richmond in April 1865. After the war she wrote her memoir: “A SOUTHERN WOMAN'S STORY”