Blue Ridge Sanatorium

Blue Ridge Sanatorium was a sanatorium for the treatment of tuberculosis located outside of Charlottesville, Virginia, United States.

Blue Ridge Sanatorium
Alternative namesBlue Ridge Hospital
General information
Coordinates38°00′32″N 78°28′21″W
Opened1920
Closed1996

The site was originally known as Moore's Brook and was operated as a private mental institution.[1] One of its central buildings, Lyman Mansion, dates to 1875.[1] Dr. D. M. Trice served as the director of Moore's Brook and used the grounds as a farm to breed prizewinning Berkshire pigs.[2] As of 1908, August Mencken, younger brother of H. L. Mencken, was doing civil engineering work at the institution.[3]

Background

The government of Virginia acquired the 142 acres (57 ha) site in 1914.[4] When it officially opened in 1920, Blue Ridge Sanatorium had room for 382 patients.[4] Construction continued at the site for some years; in 1927, the George W. Wright Pavilion was completed, a collaborative effort between architects Charles M. Robinson and Marcellus E. Wright Sr.[5] The Wright Pavilion was sponsored by the Grand Lodge of Virginia, on the condition that members of the Lodge were to receive preferential admission to the facility.[5] Virginian philanthropist Paul Goodloe McIntire contributed to the building of the sanatorium's chapel.[6]

Blue Ridge Sanatorium, along with other state-run medical institutions, was subject to racial segregation. Catawba Sanatorium (1908) and Piedmont Sanatorium (1918) had previously been established in Virginia for the treatment of tuberculosis.[7] Black tuberculosis patients in the Charlottesville area were required to travel to Piedmont Sanatorium, as Blue Ridge Sanatorium operated from the beginning under a whites-only admissions policy.[8] While the 1920s saw Blue Ridge Sanatorium establish a preventorium for pretubercular white children, "there were no sanatorium beds dedicated for African American children, even those with active disease, in or around Charlottesville until 1940," when Piedmont Sanatorium began to admit children.[9]

The development of antibiotics against tuberculosis in 1946 was the beginning of the end for many American sanatoriums, as most began to see patient numbers dwindling.[10] No new patients were admitted to Blue Ridge Sanatorium after 1962, and in 1978 the site was turned over to the University of Virginia, which renamed the facility Blue Ridge Hospital.[4][lower-alpha 1] While the Commonwealth of Virginia was expected to provide $10 million in funding, only $3 million was eventually provided, resulting in several buildings, including the Lyman Mansion, not being renovated.[12] Vamik Volkan served as medical director of Blue Ridge Hospital from 1978 to 1996, and was responsible for founding the Center for the Study of Mind and Human Interaction there in 1988.[4]

Blue Ridge Hospital closed its doors in 1996.[10] In 2001, the property was transferred to the UVA Foundation.[13] Many of the surviving buildings were reportedly deteriorating as of 2002, and a tentative proposal from Monticello to acquire the site and demolish many buildings drew strenuous protests from the university community and local historians.[6] Eventually, the UVA Foundation acted to preserve the property using "mothballing" standards developed by the National Park Service and posted a resident overseer to deter trespassing.[10] Eleven surviving buildings were stabilized by the Foundation, including a barn, various silos, the Wright Pavilion, the Chapel, Lyman Mansion, and the Bradbury houses.[13]

The site of the former Blue Ridge Sanatorium is not accessible to the public. Documents from the Blue Ridge Sanatorium are preserved at the Claude Moore Library of the University of Virginia.[14]

Notes
  1. Blue Ridge Hospital included inpatient facilities for the University of Virginia's Departments of Psychiatry, Orthopedics, Neurology, and Internal Medicine, as well as outpatient facilities for adult, child, and family psychiatry. Other components of the hospital complex included Highlands Comprehensive Epilepsy Center; Biofeedback Center; Forensic Psychiatry Clinic; Institute of Law, Psychiatry, and Public Policy; the Sleep and Dream Laboratory; and the Center for the Study of Mind and Human Interaction.[11]

References
  1. Land and Community Associates (March 1991). "Survey of State-Owned Properties: Virginia Department of Mental Health, Mental Retardation and Substance Abuse" (PDF). Virginia Department of Historic Resources. p. 34. Archived (PDF) from the original on January 10, 2022. Retrieved July 24, 2022.
  2. "Moore's Brook Berkshires". The Southern Planter. Richmond, VA: The Southern Planter Publishing Company. June 1908. Archived from the original on July 27, 2021. Retrieved July 24, 2022.
  3. Adler, Betty (Fall 1967). "August Mencken's Publications". Menckeniana (23): 11–14. JSTOR 26482825.
  4. Volkan, Vamik D. (2013). Enemies on the Couch: A Psychopolitical Journey Through War and Peace. Durham, NC: Pitchstone Publishing. p. 145. ISBN 978-0-9852815-5-7. Archived from the original on August 2, 2022. Retrieved August 2, 2022.
  5. Sucre, Richard. "The Early Institutionalization of Blue Ridge Sanatorium and the George W. Wright Pavilion". Blue Ridge Tuberculosis Sanatorium. University of Virginia. Archived from the original on December 6, 2019. Retrieved January 14, 2017.
  6. Bluestone, Daniel (Fall 2002). "Blue Ridge Sanatorium: Preserving the Landscape of Healing" (PDF). Preservation Piedmont. Archived (PDF) from the original on July 24, 2022. Retrieved July 24, 2022.
  7. "Tuberculosis Sanatoriums in Virginia: Catawba, Piedmont, and Blue Ridge". Historical Collections at the Claude Moore Health Sciences Library. 2007. Archived from the original on June 7, 2022. Retrieved July 24, 2022.
  8. Barksdale, James Worsham (1949). A Comparative Study of Contemporary White and Negro Standards in Health, Education and Welfare: Charlottesville, Virginia. University of Virginia Phelps-Stokes Fellowship Papers. p. 30. Archived from the original on August 2, 2022. Retrieved August 2, 2022.
  9. Connolly, Cynthia A. (2008). Saving Sickly Children: The Tuberculosis Preventorium in American Life, 1909–1970. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. p. 79. ISBN 978-0-8135-4267-6.
  10. Rathbone, Emma; Minturn, Molly (Fall 2015). "Peculiar Properties". Virginia Magazine. UVA Alumni Association. Archived from the original on October 27, 2021. Retrieved July 24, 2022.
  11. Volkan, p. 569.
  12. Volkan, p. 146.
  13. "Blue Ridge". UVA Foundation. Archived from the original on July 24, 2022. Retrieved July 24, 2022.
  14. McDonald, John D.; Levine-Clark, Michael, eds. (2017). Encyclopedia of Library and Information Sciences: Fourth Edition. CRC Press. p. 4762. ISBN 978-1-315-11614-3. Archived from the original on August 2, 2022. Retrieved August 2, 2022.
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