Waverly Hills Sanatorium | |
---|---|
Geography | |
Location | Kentucky, United States |
Organization | |
Type | Specialist |
Specialty | tuberculosis sanatorium |
History | |
Opened | 1910 |
Closed | 1961 |
Links | |
Lists | Hospitals in Kentucky |
Waverly Hills Tuberculosis Sanatorium Historic Buildings | |
Location | 4400 Paralee Dr., Louisville, Kentucky |
Architect | James J. Gaffney, Dennis Xavier Murphy |
MPS | Jefferson County MRA |
NRHP reference No. | 83002746 [1] |
Added to NRHP | July 12, 1983 |
The Waverly Hills Sanatorium is a former sanatorium located in the Waverly Hills neighborhood of Louisville, Kentucky.
In the early 1900s, Jefferson County was ravaged by an outbreak of tuberculosis – known as the "White Plague" – which prompted the construction of a new hospital. The Sanatorium opened in 1910 as a two-story facility able to accommodate between 40 and 50 tuberculosis patients. The hospital closed in 1961, due to the success of antibiotic drug streptomycin in lowering the needs for such a facility. At some point, plans were made to turn the abandoned hospital into a hotel, but this is no longer the case. [2] [3] [4]
The land that is known today as "Waverly Hill" was purchased by Major Thomas H. Hays in 1883 as the Hays family home. Since the new home was far away from any existing schools, Mr. Hays decided to open a local school for his daughters to attend. [5] He started a one-room schoolhouse on Pages Lane and hired Lizzie Lee Harris as the teacher. [5] Due to Miss Harris' fondness for Walter Scott's Waverley novels, she named the schoolhouse Waverley School. [5] Major Hays liked the peaceful-sounding name, so he named his property Waverley Hill. The Board of Tuberculosis Hospital kept the name when they bought the land and opened the sanatorium. [5] It is not known exactly when the spelling changed to exclude the second "e" and became Waverly Hills. However, the spelling fluctuated between both spellings many times over the years. [6] [7] [8]
In the early 1900s, Jefferson County was severely stricken with an outbreak of tuberculosis. There were many tuberculosis cases in Louisville at the time because of all the wetlands along the Ohio River, which were perfect for the tuberculosis bacteria. To try to contain the disease, a two-story wooden sanatorium was opened which consisted of an administrative/main building and two open air pavilions, each housing 20 patients, for the treatment of "early cases".
In the early part of 1911, the city of Louisville began to make preparations to build a new Louisville City Hospital, and the hospital commissioners decided in their plans that there would be no provision made in the new City Hospital for the admission of pulmonary tuberculosis, and the Board of Tuberculosis Hospital was given $25,000 to erect a hospital for the care of advanced cases of pulmonary tuberculosis. [9]
On August 31, 1912, all tuberculosis patients from the City Hospital were relocated to temporary quarters in tents on the grounds of Waverly Hills pending the completion of a hospital for advanced cases. [9] [10] In December 1912, a hospital for advanced cases opened for the treatment of another 40 patients. In 1914, a children's pavilion added another 50 beds [11] making the known "capacity" around 130 patients. [12] The children's pavilion was not only for sick children but also for the children of tuberculosis patients who could not be cared for properly otherwise. This report also mentions that the goal was to add a new building each year to continually grow so there may have even been more beds available than specifically listed.
This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (June 2024) |
Due to constant need for repairs on the wooden structures, need for a more durable structure, as well as need for more beds so that people would not be turned away due to lack of space, [13] construction of a five-story building that could hold more than 400 patients began in March 1924. The new building opened on October 17, 1926, but after the introduction of streptomycin in 1943, the number of tuberculosis cases gradually lowered until there was no longer need for such a large hospital. The remaining patients were sent to Hazelwood Sanatorium in Louisville. Waverly Hills closed in June 1961.
The building was reopened in 1962 as Woodhaven Geriatric Center, a nursing home primarily treating aging patients with various stages of dementia and mobility limits, as well as the severely mentally handicapped. However, Woodhaven failed greatly because it was severely understaffed and overcrowded. Woodhaven also had reports over patient neglect and was closed by the state of Kentucky in 1980. [14]
Simpsonville developer J. Clifford Todd bought the hospital in 1983 for $3,005,000. He and architect Milton Thompson wanted to convert it into a minimum-security prison for the state, but the developers dropped the plan after neighbors protested. Todd and Thompson then proposed converting the hospital into apartments, but they counted on Jefferson Fiscal Court to buy around 140 acres (57 ha) from them for $400,000, giving them the money to start the project. [15]
In March 1996, Robert Alberhasky bought Waverly Hills and the surrounding area. Alberhasky's Christ the Redeemer Foundation Inc. made plans to construct the world's tallest statue of Jesus on the site, along with an arts and worship center. The statue, which was inspired by the famed Christ the Redeemer statue on Corcovado Mountain in Rio de Janeiro, would have been designed by local sculptor Ed Hamilton and architect Jasper Ward. [16] The first phase of the development, coming in at a cost of $4 million, would have been a statue of 150 feet (46 m) tall and 150 feet (46 m) wide, situated on the roof of the sanatorium. The second phase would convert the old sanatorium into a chapel, theater, and a gift shop at a cost of $8 million or more. [17]
The plan to construct this religious icon fell through because donations to the project fell well short of expectations. In a period of a year, only $3,000 was raised towards the project despite efforts to pool money from across the nation. The project was canceled in December 1997. [17]
After Alberhasky's efforts failed, Waverly Hills was sold to Tina and Charlie Mattingly in 2001. The Mattinglys hold tours of Waverly Hills and host a haunted house attraction each Halloween, with proceeds going toward restoration of the property. They're also currently restoring all the windows in the decrepit building while restoring the interior of the old sanatorium. [18] [19]
Waverly Hills Sanatorium hosted the last show of the touring music festival Sounds of the Underground on August 11, 2007. The show featured prominent acts in the extreme metal and metalcore scene, including Job for a Cowboy, The Acacia Strain, Hatebreed, Shadows Fall, Chimaira, GWAR, Cameo, Lamb of God, and The Number Twelve Looks Like You. Similar festivals or concerts will likely not happen again at the Waverly Hills Sanatorium, due to complaints made by local residents. [20]
The sanatorium featured a tunnel built to carry steam and supplies between the heating plant located at the bottom of the hill and the main sanatorium building. The tunnel was equipped with a cable car used to transport items up and down the passageway. According to a number of stories and anecdotes, during a limited time between the 1920s and 1940s the tunnel also served to transport corpses to a waiting ambulance at the bottom of the hill, sparing patients the knowledge that someone had died. [21]
Louisville is the most populous city in the Commonwealth of Kentucky, sixth-most populous city in the Southeast, and the 27th-most-populous city in the United States. By land area, it is the country's 24th-largest city, although by population density, it is the 265th most dense city. Louisville is the historical county seat and, since 2003, the nominal seat of Jefferson County, on the Indiana border.
duPont Manual High School is a public magnet high school located in the Old Louisville neighborhood of Louisville, Kentucky, United States. It serves students in grades 9–12. It is a part of the Jefferson County Public School District. DuPont Manual is recognized by the United States Department of Education as a Blue Ribbon School.
Legend tripping is a name bestowed by folklorists and anthropologists on an adolescent practice in which a usually furtive nocturnal pilgrimage is made to a site which is alleged to have been the scene of some tragic, horrific, and possibly supernatural event or haunting. The practice mostly involves the visiting of sites endemic to locations identified in local urban legends. Legend tripping has been documented most thoroughly to date in the United States.
A sanatorium, also sanitarium or sanitorium, is a historic name for a specialised hospital for the treatment of specific diseases, related ailments, and convalescence. Sanatoriums are often in a healthy climate, usually in the countryside. The idea of healing was an important reason for the historical wave of establishments of sanatoria, especially at the end of the 19th and early 20th centuries. One sought, for instance, the healing of consumptives especially tuberculosis or alcoholism, but also of more obscure addictions and longings of hysteria, masturbation, fatigue and emotional exhaustion. Facility operators were often charitable associations, such as the Order of St. John and the newly founded social welfare insurance companies.
The history of Louisville, Kentucky spans nearly two-and-a-half centuries since its founding in the late 18th century. The geology of the Ohio River, with but a single series of rapids midway in its length from the confluence of the Monongahela and Allegheny rivers to its union with the Mississippi, made it inevitable that a town would grow on the site. The town of Louisville, Kentucky was chartered there in 1780. From its early days on the frontier, it quickly grew to be a major trading and distribution center in the mid-19th century and an important industrial city in the early 20th. The city declined in the mid-20th century, but by the late 20th, it was revitalized as a culturally-focused mid-sized American city.
The Waverley Novels are a long series of novels by Sir Walter Scott (1771–1832). For nearly a century, they were among the most popular and widely read novels in Europe.
Waverly Hills is a neighborhood in Southwestern Louisville, Kentucky which is centered at Dixie Highway and Pages Lane. It is located in a hilly section of the city, which is part of the larger Knobs Region which extends into southeastern Kentucky. Its boundaries are roughly Stonestreet Road and 3rd Street Road to the south, Dixie Highway to the west, St Andrews Church Road to the north, and Auburndale to the east.
University Hospital Hairmyres is a district general hospital in the Hairmyres neighbourhood of East Kilbride, South Lanarkshire, Scotland. The hospital serves one of the largest elderly populations in Scotland. It is managed by NHS Lanarkshire.
The Louisville Water Tower, located east of downtown Louisville, Kentucky, near the riverfront, is the oldest ornamental water tower in the world, having been built before the more famous Chicago Water Tower. Both the actual water tower and its pumping station are a designated National Historic Landmark for their architecture. As with the Fairmount Water Works of Philadelphia, the industrial nature of its pumping station was disguised in the form of a Roman temple complex.
The United States Marine Hospital in Louisville, Kentucky, in the Portland neighborhood was part of the U.S. Marine Hospital system, which was run by the Marine Hospital Service and its successor the Public Health Service, primarily for the benefit of the civilian merchant marine.
Paul C. Barth was mayor of Louisville, Kentucky, from 1905 to 1907.
Between 1873 and 1945, Saranac Lake, New York, became a world-renowned center for the treatment of tuberculosis, using a treatment that involved exposing patients to as much fresh air as possible under conditions of complete bed-rest. In the process, a specific building type, the "cure cottage", developed, built by residents seeking to capitalize on the town's fame, by physicians, and often by the patients themselves. Many of these structures are extant, and their historic value has been recognized by listing on The National Register of Historic Places.
The Saratoga County Homestead, or Homestead Sanitarium, was a large tuberculosis sanatorium located in the hamlet of Barkersville, [Also known as East Galway] in Providence, New York. It is publicly recorded as The Homestead Sanitarium and located on County Highway 16.
Glen Lake Sanatorium, a tuberculosis treatment center serving Hennepin County in Minnesota, opened on January 4, 1916, with a capacity of 50 patients, and closed in 1976. In 1909, the Minnesota State Legislature had passed a bill authorizing the appointment of county sanatorium boards and appropriating money for the construction of county sanatoriums. Glen Lake Sanatorium was the fifth of fourteen county sanatoria that opened in Minnesota between 1912 and 1918. Glen Lake was the first U.S. tuberculosis sanatorium to be accredited by the American Medical Association.The sanatorium had its own post office, and the mailing address was Glen Lake Sanatorium, Oak Terrace, Minnesota, until the surrounding area was incorporated into the City of Minnetonka.
The Rutland Heights State Hospital was a state sanatorium for the treatment of pulmonary tuberculosis located in Rutland, Massachusetts, built for the purpose of treating Tuberculosis patients. The facility was the first state-operated sanatorium in the United States, opening in 1898 and operating for around 93 years before its closure in 1991. Rutland Heights opened under the title “Massachusetts Hospital for Consumptives and Tubercular Patients,” to which it operated until 1900, where it was renamed to “Massachusetts State Sanatorium.” In 1919 it was renamed to “Rutland State Sanatorium,” which was the longest operating name of the hospital, effective until 1963. In 1963, it was renamed briefly to “Rutland Hospital,” and successively in 1965 to “Rutland Heights State Hospital,” which was the final title of the hospital until closing. In 2004, the hospital was demolished.
The following is a timeline of the history of the city of Louisville, Kentucky, USA.
The Firland Sanatorium was Seattle's municipal tuberculosis treatment center. It opened on May 2, 1911, and closed on October 30, 1973.
University Tuberculosis Hospital was a sanatorium located on Marquam Hill in Portland, Oregon, United States, established in 1939. The hospital was the third sanatorium to open in the state of Oregon after the state legislature mandated public health care for tuberculosis patients in 1909.
Shane Alexander Madej is an American Internet personality, paranormal investigator, and co-founder of digital entertainment company, Watcher Entertainment. Madej rose to prominence for co-starring in the YouTube true crime and supernatural series BuzzFeed Unsolved.