In 1865
Abraham Lincoln approved a "National Asylum" to care for volunteer Union soldiers who had been wounded during the
Civil War. The Northwestern Branch of the
National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers was established in 1866, as an
old soldiers' home in the then northwestern region of United States. The Wisconsin Soldiers' Home Society transferred the money and property already acquired by that group to the federal effort for the National Asylum for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers, renamed the
National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers in 1873. The Eastern Branch was opened in 1866 at a former resort in
Togus, Maine. The Central Branch was established in 1867 outside of
Dayton, Ohio. The Northwestern and Central Branches had ambitious building campaigns that erected large-scale institutional structures within carefully designed landscapes. The large structure used a centralized model, housing all the services and soldiers within it. Expansion of the membership and a shift towards a decentralized model in the 1880s and 1890s resulted in the construction of a number of specialized new buildings at the Milwaukee Soldiers Home. In 1879 a new hospital was built west of the Main Building. This structure was the first major step toward creating the cluster of buildings that define the historic core of the campus. the chapel (1889), Wadsworth Library (1892), and the 1896
Colonial Revival-styled headquarters building (1894). In 1930 the National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers, the Pension Bureau, and the Veterans' Bureau were combined under the new
Veterans Administration. The Northwestern Branch became known as the Wood, Wisconsin, station of the Veterans' Administration. ==Present day==