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Featured Article Of The Week

Blue Ridge Sanatorium


Charlottesville view.jpg

The Blue Ridge Sanatorium began life in 1902 when a group of Charlottesville area physicians lead by Dr. D.M. Trice[1] purchased 106 acres of land in the Blue Ridge foothills including farm structures, a spring, and the Lyman Mansion from Mrs. J.E. Lyman.[2] The company soon acquired a charter from the state allowing them to hold voluntary and legally committed patients for treatment of nervous and mental disorders plus drug and alcohol problems. Boasting steam heat, gas lighting, and indoor plumbing the Moore's Creek Sanitarium had a twenty-three patient capacity. Men were housed on the second floor, and women on the first. Typical of contemporary sanitariums the patients were engaged in outdoor activities on the former farm or in crafts indoors.

Trice's company dissolved in 1914 and the property lay unused until 1919. In that year the Commonwealth of Virginia was looking for another tuberculosis sanatorium site to complement the original Catawba Sanatorium (for whites) and the Piedmont Sanatorium (for blacks). Several factors made the former Moore's Creek site attractive to the Commonwealth. Not only was the University of Virginia Medical School located nearby, but paved road access, mountain scenery plus money and water connections offered by the city made it a hard location to pass up. The Lyman Mansion became the Administration (Davis) Building, central facility of the sanatorium. Even as the facility expanded it maintained the connection to the land begun by Moore's Creek. The Sanatorium largely subsisted on the produce it raised and a surplus of milk produced by the dairy farm on the property was sold in the city.

The first addition to the property were the three pavilions, designed to the then modern concept of providing as much fresh air as possible to help cure patients. Built to the same plans as the Morton pavilion at the Piedmont Sanatorium they were two story buildings of frame construction with wings off the sides of a central core housing the main facilities. Click here for more...