Recognize this building? If you’ve been to the North Park Village Nature Center, this building faces the parking lot. It’s been modified for its current use as a residential building, but like many of the buildings on the site, it is still recognizable from this photograph in a 1915 book.
I’m thrilled to announce the much delayed arrival of my new blog, Chicago Municipal Tuberculosis Sanitarium Remembered. The poor child is not quite standing on its own feet yet, but eventually I hope to report on the history, the built environment and the people who passed through this important public health facility. The posts I [...]
Back in early July my daughter and I visited Lincoln Park Zoo. When I saw South Pond I thought an environmental disaster had occurred. Gone were the curvilinear paths surrounding the pond. Gone was the island’s wild overgrowth. Gone were the giant swan paddleboats.
The ivy is from Wrigley Field. So are the box seats. Ditto the dugout bench. Ditto the sod. Ditto the pavers. It doesn’t get more real, unless you’re actually at Wrigley Field. But I wasn’t. I was on a walking tour of the Bohemian National Cemetery. When you’re walking past rows of monuments in sombre grays and [...]
As regular readers of this blog know, I grew up in Chicago on North Central Park Avenue across from the grounds of the Municipal TB Sanitarium. Entirely hidden by a border of towering trees and overgrown shrubs, the TB Sanitarium was such a mysterious place I barely noticed the other large, fenced-in parcel of land in the neighborhood. The signs on [...]
I, for one, have never in my life come across a perfectly healthy human being. – The Magic Mountain (1924), Thomas Mann Just when I think I’m done writing about the Municipal Tuberculosis Sanitarium, more compelling information comes my way. Here’s a patient’s account of her two years at the sanitarium. It tells of a bright moment [...]
As mentioned earlier, I uncovered the history of Chicago’s Municipal TB Sanitarium but learned little about the purpose it served. Guest blogger Dr. Gilberto Gonzalez, a retired general surgeon, offered to fill in the blanks for me. Dr. Gonzalez trained at Mercy Hospital in Chicago for three years, the Municipal Tuberculosis Sanitarium for one year (1961-62) and [...]
More than the sight of my old house, this takes me back. The corner of Peterson and Central Park avenues, the unused service entrance to the sanitarium. That white square sign hanging on the left-hand side of the gate? Directions to the main entrance, I’m sure of it. A corner of the guard house, pictured in my first post [...]
The Municipal Tuberculosis Sanitarium on Chicago’s far north side once was a place that frightened neighborhood children and once was a place of misery, as a physician wrote in a comment to my earlier post. Today, it’s a very accessible, much-treasured public resource serving many people and many purposes. Most of the original buildings were demolished, but [...]
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