In 1907, the state of New Jersey opened its first state owned tuberculosis sanatorium in Glen Gardner NJ. It was designed to be the model institution of the time, providing care for 500 patients each year. The facility treated over 10,000 people between 1907 and 1929. [1]
Originally, the goal of the hospital was to only take in “cureable people” to treat but by the 1920s the hospital broadedned its mission to treat all cases. Sanatorium treatment of tuberculosis remained relatively unchanged until the development of streptomycin at Rutgers University in the 1940s, which was in general use by the 1950s. The need for isolation hospitals began to diminish and the hospital closed, sitting vacant for 20 years. [2]
In 1977, a new gero-psychiatric
hospital, named after Senator Garrett W. Hagedorn in 1986, was built next to the previously used,
abandoned sanatorium. The new hospital was a state nursing home and a
288-bed psychiatric hospital. In 2011, New Jersey governor Chis Christie announced
that the hospital would shut down as part of an effort to save $9 million
a year. [3] Today
the hospital sits vacant but is still maintained to a degree by maintenance and
security workers employed by the state of N.J.
[1] https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/new-jerseys-abandoned-hospitals
[2] https://lists.h-net.org/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl?trx=vx&list=h-new-jersey&month=0701&week=b&msg=ILO9%2BcuS16i5fVpM5kiX5Q&user=&pw=
[3] http://desertedplaces.blogspot.com/2017/10/the-abandoned-hagedorn-psychiatric.html
