Waverly Hills Sanitorium: A History Full of Pain and Grief

When the founders of Louisville, Kentucky, established the city in 1778, they had no idea of the later implications the location of the city would have in the battle against Tuberculosis.  Louisville is the perfect breeding ground for the disease, as the location of the city is on low-lying swampland and provides the perfect environment for the proliferation of the bacteria that causes the disease.  The outbreak of Tuberculosis began in Louisville in the late nineteenth century and continued well after the halfway point of the twentieth century.  Waverly Hills Sanitorium was built as an attempt to control the severity of the Tuberculosis outbreak and is the site of over eight thousand documented deaths from the disease.

The location known today as “Waverly Hill” can trace its origins to the year 1883 when it was purchased by Major Thomas H. Hays as the location for his family home. Unfortunately, the property was located quite some distance from any of the existing schools and Major Hays had two daughters.  He decided to build a one-room schoolhouse and hired Lizzie Lee Harris as the teacher.  Miss Harris was quite fond of the Waverly novels by Walter Scott and named the new building Waverly School. Major Hays liked this name so much he decided to name his property Waverly Hill.  

The residents of the Louisville area saw a prolific outbreak of Tuberculosis in the dawn of the twentieth century. The dreaded disease was called The White Plague and it received its name due to the paleness of the sufferers. Louisville, with its wetlands and proximity to the Ohio River, had the largest population of Tuberculosis sufferers during this time. Tuberculosis is a serious illness that affects mainly the lungs. The disease is spread easily through droplets in the air.  These droplets can be distributed by the sufferer coughing, sneezing or simply speaking.  Symptoms of Tuberculosis can include coughing up blood, chest pain, pain and difficulty breathing, fever, chills and loss of appetite.  There was no cure for the disease.  Ultraviolet light, fresh air and good nutrition were the only available mainstream treatments.  The other treatments available ventured into the world of scientific experiments and were extremely painful and oftentimes fatal.  

By 1900, the city leaders of Louisville recognized the need for a facility in which to house Tuberculosis patients to not only treat the disease but also to prevent its spread.  $25,000 was given to the Board of Trustees of Louisville City Hospital and in 1908 construction began on a two-story, wooden building with an administrative/main building and two open-air pavilions, each with a 20 patient capacity, for the treatment of “early cases”. This soon proved to be an inadequate facility for no city was raging with the White Plague like Louisville.  Plans were soon in place to expand.

Due to Tuberculosis being extremely contagious, it was not possible to leave the grounds of the sanatorium.  Patients, doctors, nurses and staff members alike were quarantined to the property. The children of the patients were housed in a separate wing of Waverly Hills.  Because no one was allowed to leave, Waverly Hills had to become a completely self-sufficient facility, complete with its own zip code and post office.  There were gardens of fruits and vegetables, animals kept for milk, eggs, and meat and even a water treatment plant. The physical toll of Tuberculosis is well known, however, the mental toll is often overlooked.  Families were separated and unable to see one another.  This must have been extremely difficult for all involved.  

In 1924, Waverly Hills was extensively expanded to the five-story structure that is familiar today.  This new building could hold more than 400 patients and was the most advanced Tuberculosis hospital in the country.  Because there were no medications, staff attempted to do what was best for the patients.  Sunlight, fresh air and a lot of bed rest were all that could be done to combat the effects of the disease.  Even in the middle of winter patients were placed outside in the fresh air and photographs from that era show them covered in snow.  

Treatments for the disease were sometimes as bad as the disease itself.  Experiments were often extremely painful and many patients died.  Sunlight and fresh air was believed to be an effective treatment.  Waverly Hills had wide balconies where patients could be wheeled out in their beds to absorb the sunlight.  Patients were often placed in front of large windows.  Artificial sunlight was another option as patients were placed in “sun rooms” full of manufactured ultraviolet light sources.  These were the more mundane treatments.  The experiments were so violent that they were the source of terror and pain.  One experiment involved the surgical removal of ribs and muscles, another the surgical implantation of balloons to stretch the lungs.  As expected, the survival rate of these experiments was extremely low.  

The invention of streptomycin, an antibiotic used to treat bacterial infections, changed the way Tuberculosis was treated and soon the cases were dramatically reduced.  This made sanitoriums used for large-scale treatment obsolete.  Waverly Hills closed its doors in 1961.  All remaining patients were transferred to nearby smaller facilities.  After over half a century of death, Waverly was no more.

The facility did not stay closed for long and soon another sad chapter would be opened in the history of Waverly Hills.  In 1961, the facility reopened as Woodhaven Geriatrics Center. Woodhaven acted as a nursing home for the elderly, as well as the severely handicapped.  Lack of funding caused the facility to be severely understaffed and reports of patient neglect were rampant.  Electroshock therapy was still in use for a variety of ailments.  The facility was finally shut down in 1982.

Waverly Hills sat alone and vacant for nearly twenty years, the empty halls littered with graffiti, trash, and glass from broken bottles.  The building gained a reputation for being a haunted location and legions of teens and adults alike prowled the facility in the black of night hoping to catch a glimpse of a spirit.  The property was purchased by Charlie and Tina Mattingly in 2001 and the couple is trying to preserve the past of Waverly Hills. Both paranormal and historical tours of the property are available.  Waverly has a reputation of being one of the most haunted locations in the United States. This is not difficult to believe considering the death and suffering that has occurred on these grounds.  

Waverly Hills stands as a monument for the past and America’s difficult struggles with the disease that was Tuberculosis.  The doctors, nurses, staff and patients may be long gone, but the echoes of suffering still reverberate throughout the empty corridors of one of the most haunted buildings in America.