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About Waverly Hills
The Waverly Hills Sanatorium is a former sanatorium located in the Waverly Hills neighborhood of Louisville, Kentucky.
In the early 1900s, Jefferson County was ravaged by an outbreak of tuberculosis – known as the “White Plague” – which prompted the construction of a new hospital. The Sanatorium opened in 1910 as a two-story facility able to accommodate between 40 and 50 tuberculosis patients. The hospital closed in 1961, due to the success of antibiotic drug streptomycin in lowering the needs for such a facility. At some point, plans were made to turn the abandoned hospital into a hotel, but this is no longer the case.
The land that is known today as “Waverly Hill” was purchased by Major Thomas H. Hays in 1883 as the Hays’ family home. Since the new home was far away from any existing schools, Mr. Hays decided to open a local school for his daughters to attend. He started a one-room schoolhouse on Pages Lane and hired Lizzie Lee Harris as the teacher. Due to Miss Harris’ fondness for Walter Scott’s Waverley novels, she named the schoolhouse Waverley School. Major Hays liked the peaceful-sounding name, so he named his property Waverley Hill. The Board of Tuberculosis Hospital kept the name when they bought the land and opened the sanatorium. It is not known exactly when the spelling changed to exclude the second “e” and became Waverly Hills. However, the spelling fluctuated between both spellings many times over the years.
In the early 1900s, Jefferson County was severely stricken with an outbreak of tuberculosis. There were many tuberculosis cases in Louisville at the time because of all the wetlands along the Ohio River, which were perfect for the tuberculosis bacteria. To try to contain the disease, a two-story wooden sanatorium was opened which consisted of an administrative/main building and two open air pavilions, each housing 20 patients, for the treatment of “early cases”.
In the early part of 1911, the city of Louisville began to make preparations to build a new Louisville City Hospital, and the hospital commissioners decided in their plans that there would be no provision made in the new City Hospital for the admission of pulmonary tuberculosis, and the Board of Tuberculosis Hospital was given $25,000 to erect a hospital for the care of advanced cases of pulmonary tuberculosis. Due to constant need for repairs on the wooden structures, need for a more durable structure, as well as need for more beds so that people would not be turned away due to lack of space,[13] construction of a five-story building that could hold more than 400 patients began in March 1924. The new building opened on October 17, 1926, but after the introduction of streptomycin in 1943, the number of tuberculosis cases gradually lowered, until there was no longer need for such a large hospital. The remaining patients were sent to Hazelwood Sanatorium in Louisville. Waverly Hills closed in June 1961.
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Waverly Hills Sanatorium
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502-690-7880
4400 Paralee Drive
Louisville, Ky