Cleveland was a tough town in the 1890s. The young surgeons Crile and Bunts were so busy they needed to add another partner to the office. In 1892, they were joined by Dr. William Lower, Crile’s cousin, who shared the partners’ raging work ethic.
As their reputations grew and patient volumes increased, Crile, Bunts and Lower moved to successively more spacious and better-equipped facilities. The “Office” years were a kind of golden age for the partners. “Through it all,” Crile later wrote, “we managed to think and act as a unit.”