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.
Tag Archives: Municipal Tuberculosis Sanitarium
Municipal Tuberculosis Sanitarium: A Patient’s Story
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 [...]
Forbidden Places–Epilogue
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 [...]
Forbidden Places–Part Three
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 [...]
Forbidden Places–Part Two
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 [...]
Forbidden Places–Part One
A seemingly endless stretch of wilderness faced the house I grew up in on Chicago’s far north side. Dense stands of old-growth trees stood guard around its perimeter. Looking west from our front door, all I could see beyond the green chain-link fence was grass, trees and a tall dark tower. As we know from [...]
Recent Comments