Remembering the Municipal Tuberculosis Sanitarium
The house I grew up in, from 1963 to the 1974, faced the grounds of the Municipal Tuberculosis Sanitarium. We lived on the 5900 block of North Central Park Avenue in Chicago. From the bay window on the front of our house, I could see nothing by grass, shrubs and trees. There was a fence around the site and twice a day a security car drove around the perimeter. We could see his car from inside our house, and we could tell the time from his rounds. We also could see a tall chimney and tower rising high over the trees; the groundskeeper’s house at Ardmore and Central Park; a neon-lit sign at the corner of Peterson and Central Park; and the guard houses bookending the wide driveway at the facility’s entrance on Pulaski and Bryn Mawr. When we gave directions to our house to people visiting for the first time, we always said, turn left at the Tuberculosis Sanitarium sign.
I was terrified of the place. All the kids in the neighborhood were, though we never saw any hospital buildings or a single patient on the grounds. No one knew what was on the other side of the fence, so our imaginations ran wild.
As I began to think about exploring my version of Chicago in this blog, I realized that biggest mystery of all had been right in front of me all my life. I began researching the Sanitarium and posted several stories about my research under the title “Forbidden Places.” I received many responses from people who had been connected in some way to the Sanitarium. Inspired by their stories, I’ve continued my research. It’s an enormous history to cover, and so you’ll only find portions of the whole story on this blog, and on the new one. I hope t continue adding to the narrative and welcome contributions from readers who have knowledge of the Sanitarium.
NOTE: After writing the blogposts listed below about the Municipal Tuberculosis Sanitarium, I created a second website devoted entirely to remembering the facility. The new site contains personal accounts from patients, physicians and other staff who worked at the MTS. My earliest writings about the Sanitarium were, however, written on this blog, “Me & My Shadow,” and for the time being are posted only on this site. Eventually I plan to move these posts over to the new site, so everything will be in one place.
On this blog:
Municipal Tuberculosis Sanitarium: A Patient’s Story
Memories of the Municipal Tuberculosis Sanitarium–Full-length version of the Epilogue post, written by Gilberto Gonzalez, M.D., who was a medical resident at the MTS in the early 1960s.
Elsewhere on the Internet:
“Remembering the Municipal Tuberculosis Sanitarium,” by Frances Archer, Northwest Chicago Historical Society Newsletter, January 2011 issue.
NY Times article about one of the last of the original U.S. sanitariums
Asylums Project, a wikipedia forum devoted to historical and current information about asylums in the U.S. and around the world
