Homeland Center, at Fifth and Muench Streets in uptown Harrisburg, is the embodiment in bricks and mortar of over a century of caring and innovation. The big old house that was built on the site in 1871 still stands, flanked by newer construction added over the years as the men and women of the Homeland family expanded, refined, and redefined their mission. Originally chartered as the "Home for the Friendless," Homeland Center is today a Personal Care Home and Skilled Nursing Facility providing a wide variety of services to the aging population of the greater Harrisburg area.

Homeland's story begins in the winter of 1866, in the aftermath of the Civil War. Battlefield casualties were not the only human losses of that conflict, as soldiers' wives, widows, and parents struggled to provide for dependent family members without the support of dead and disabled husbands and sons. In December of 1866, the Harrisburg Patriot called attention to "the large number of children who are daily to be seen on our streets in a ragged, forlorn condition."

Just a few weeks earlier, on November 21, representatives of nine city churches had met at Market Square Presbyterian Church to consider what might be done to help the "friendless persons" of Harrisburg and Dauphin County. It was not just the ragged children who touched their hearts, but also the plight of women growing older without families to support and care for them. What was needed, they concluded, was a "Home for the Friendless" to shelter those women and children. Accordingly, the "Society for the Home for the Friendless" was formally chartered in May of 1867, under the supervision of a Board of Trustees chaired by William Buehler. To oversee the daily activities of the Home they hoped to establish, eighteen women representing the nine founding churches were organized as a "Board of Lady Managers" with Eliza Haldeman as president.

A little over a year after their first meeting, the Society had raised sufficient funds to begin operations in a rented house downtown at Third and Mulberry. Their dream, though, was to build a house of their own, and in November of 1870 they broke ground for the house that still stands at Fifth and Muench. Mrs. Haldeman, then over eighty years old, turned over the first sod herself. The Harrisburg Patriot said of the founders: "They hope to lay the foundations of an institution which will be a glory to the city, and a blessing to the poor, destitute, and friendless." They built so well that Homeland, though it has outlived its original mission as a charity home, has been able to adapt to changing societal needs and remains a vital part of the Harrisburg community.

For the first forty years, the Home for the Friendless admitted both children (almost exclusively young girls) and elderly women. The Managers and Trustees carried out a dual mission of providing for the health and comfort of the elderly residents as well as educating the children for placement in secure occupations when it came time for them to leave. An ambitious expansion project in 1909-1910 (funded by a bequest from the estate of Jesse Wingert and a matching gift campaign) updated and modernized the Home. At peak capacity, ten or fifteen women and as many as forty children could be accommodated as members of the "Home Family." But by the early years of the twentieth century, children were being placed in foster care more often than in institutions, and by 1920 the Home for the Friendless was exclusively an old age home. The elderly population was changing too, as was society's perceptions of them. For the most part, the "senior citizens" of the middle years of the twentieth century did not need, or even want, the kind of institutional charity that had motivated the founders of the Home for the Friendless. Many of them, however, did need the kinds of services that could be provided in the context of a personal care home, services that the Home had been providing for a century. Others needed health care, either assistance in managing chronic disease or impairment, or skilled nursing care in the aftermath of acute illness or injury.

The renaissance that saw the transformation of the Home for the Friendless into Homeland Center began in the 1950s. Small changes early in the decade, such as the addition of a beauty parlor in 1953 and an unofficial name change to "Homeland Center" in 1955, indicated a new way of thinking about the institution and its residents. In 1959, north and south wings were added to the building, allowing for the admission of men for the first time. A legacy from George Lyman Fisher, which for years had been accumulating toward the goal of providing a home for elderly gentlemen of Dauphin County, was directed toward the expansion of Homeland for this purpose. At the same time, the existing "infirmary" was upgraded to a modern skilled nursing unit through the generosity of the Kunkel family.

The 1970s were a decade of challenges for Homeland's leadership, determined as they were to transform into a professionalized health care facility without compromising their historic legacy of volunteerism and personal service. Increasing governmental regulation of the delivery of health care and human services meant that the Managers and Trustees, in cooperation with Homeland's increasingly professionalized staff, had to learn to meet requirements and deliver services undreamed of when the institution was founded.

Today, Homeland provides a wide array of services to the senior citizens of the greater Harrisburg area, including personal care services, skilled nursing care, and a safe and secure environment for patients with Alzheimer's disease. For all of these people, Homeland is what the founders intended-a home. Homeland Center looks back to the values and idealism of the 1860s. At the same time, it looks forward to new ways of living and new ways of caring.