Peoria Municipal Tuberculosis Sanatorium

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Peoria Municipal Tuberculosis Sanatorium
Established 1913
Opened 1919
Closed 1973
Current Status Preserved
Building Style Single Building
Architect(s) Hewitt, Emerson & Gregg
Location Peoria, IL
Alternate Names



History[edit]

The sanitarium’s first permanent building opened in 1919. Incurable and highly contagious, the disease colored the way the city lived and died. It was the leading cause of death in Peoria, and the United States, for the first three decades of the 1900s. It was the second TB sanitarium in Illinois, the first downstate. In its early days, the recommended treatment stay was at least a year, including six months total bed rest. The sanitarium closed in 1973, a willing victim of decades of public health campaigns and the discovery of an antibiotic called streptomycin. By the time its last 10 patients moved to a new pulmonary disease unit at what was then Saint Francis Hospital, almost 6,000 people had been treated at the sanitarium. Some stayed for two years or longer.