While smallpox was a feared disease, tuberculosis — consumption, wasting disease, white plague, whatever it was called — was once the major killer, particularly of young people. This insidious contagion, spread from person to person through the air by a sneeze, cough, or spit, was no respecter of class. Prevention and treatment of tuberculosis was championed by Dr. Henry Moore, a resident of the Indianapolis suburb of Irvington, and at the time “the underlying principle in the treatment of tuberculosis was rest,” diet, and sunshine. Dr. Moore was an organizer of the Indiana Association for the Study and Prevention of Tuberculosis and developed plans and supervised the construction of the State Tuberculosis Hospital at Rockville, Indiana, which opened in 1910.
Three years later, the Indiana legislature authorized counties to establish a local tuberculosis hospital. In the five years prior to 1913 tuberculosis was the leading killer with the deaths of 2,715 men, women, and children in Marion County and in the five years prior to 1914 Indianapolis saw 2,448 TB deaths. The Marion County Society for the Prevention of Tuberculosis and other local organizations petitioned the county commissioners for a hospital and in September 1914 the county council authorized a tax levy of one cent on every $100 of assessed value to build and support a hospital. This together with similar actions taken by the county councils in St. Joseph, Howard, and Madison counties was hailed as a “big day for the anti-tuberculosis organizations in Indiana.”
A thirty-seven-acre site (eventually encompassing 57 acres), mostly timbered with large maple trees, on rolling ground along Indian Creek, adjacent to the Big Four Railroad and the Union Traction Co interurban line, near Oaklandon and one-half mile north of Pendleton Pike, was purchased for $12,000 (2026: $392,142) by the county commissioners from the Springer Estate in June 1915 for the new hospital. Six months later, the county council appropriated $80,000 (2026: $2,588,396) to build it and approved comprehensive plans by Indianapolis architect William E. Russ for a 300-bed facility consisting of a “large administration building with wings on either side [and] at a considerable distance on the right and on the left of this main building…a group of cottages with a large recreation hall at the rear of each group.” William P. Jungclaus Co was awarded the construction contract and Dr. John N. Hurty, state health commissioner, laid the cornerstone on Saturday, July 22, 1916. “Sunnyside” was the name selected for the new Marion County Tuberculosis Hospital. A naming committee headed by Hoosier Poet James Whitcomb Riley selected this submission by Fannie G. Strawson from hundreds offered by the public “because of its recuperative connotations.”
Sunnyside Sanitarium opened in September 1917 with Dr. Harold Hatch, a tuberculosis expert formerly with the Michigan state board of health, being named hospital superintendent and Carrie H. Hudnell appointed superintendent of nurses. Six patients were initially admitted and within days twelve additional patients were transferred to the new facility from the state hospital at Rockville. In the beginning, Sunnyside was one building and could accommodate only seventy patients and there was a long waiting list. While Blacks accounted for twenty-two per cent of Marion County TB deaths, only seven beds at Sunnyside were allocated for Black patients. Infected soldiers returning from World War I created an additional need for bed space at the sanitarium, many in the early stages of the disease who would “readily respond to treatment if treatment were made available.”
To alleviate tedious months or years patients might have to undergo treatment at Sunnyside, a recreational hall was available and a mile of concrete walkways winding through the complex provided convalescents with safe footing for exercise while enjoying the natural beauty of the grounds, fresh air, and sunshine. A school, under the guidance of a teacher, kept children invalids abreast of their studies. By the mid-1920s, Sunnyside had successfully treated 1,150 individuals and the facility had expanded to nine buildings — a children’s unit, two new units for men and women, and a nurses’ home — with bedspace for 170 patients that include forty-nine children, ages 4 to 15 years.
The Sunnyside Guild was formed in 1920 by Claire Gray Syfers “to make patient’s lives cheerier” through recreation and amusements. The Guild gave holiday parties and provided wearing apparel for the patients. It also bought player pianos, motion picture projectors, and had bedside earphones installed for patients to hear radio broadcasts, making Sunnyside the second hospital in the United Sates to have this convenience. The Children’s Sunshine Club of Sunnyside was organized in 1923 by forty-five women. It furnished the children’s recreation room, obtained slides for the playground, and provided books for the children’s library.
After World War II, the treatment of tuberculosis changed radically with the use of drugs, eliminating the need for bed rest in most cases. On November 1, 1967, Sunnyside closed and 100 patients were relocated to Marion County General Hospital’s new pulmonary disease section and to the Flower Mission Building. Four years later, Presbyterian Housing Program, Inc bought the former tuberculosis sanatorium’s buildings and its 57 acres. Following a $3,000,000 (2026: $21,037,661) renovation of the eight buildings, Westminster Village North opened on November 1, 1972, to the retirement community’s first senior residents.
