We built this city on... tuberculosis?

Look at this cute little building! What can it be? Is it a gazebo or tea house? Perhaps it's a tiny play cottage? I hate to break it to ya, but this is a tuberculosis hut. That's right, tuberculosis! What on earth...? Colorado Springs is known for many things, but I'm sure disease isn't the first word that comes to mind for most people! This is a part of Colorado Springs history that I'll bet you didn't know about: many early residents, especially the wealthy, moved here because of the sunny, dry climate, in hopes of being cured of the dreaded consumption. At one time, these little huts were commonplace outbuildings in our downtown area and in the many sanatoriums in the Pikes Peak region. There are still a few to be found here and there. And if you take a close look at the beautiful Victorian mansions that line our downtown boulevards, you may notice that quite a few of them have sunrooms on their second floors, especially on the south and west sides of the home. That's a sure sign that a tuberculosis sufferer once lived there.

This particular TB hut was put in place in the Margery Reed Memorial Park, right in front of Penrose Hospital, in July (BTW the giant smokestack belongs to the hospital, not the hut!). It's only a couple of blocks west of my studio. Take a minute to look at this rare film I found on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yft_uoglRzM . It shows the Woodmen Sanatorium in 1933, and you can see the many huts they had for all their patients, all exactly like this one (there's also really cool footage of Colorado Springs way back when!). And did you know that the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, my alma mater, started its life as a sanatorium too? The building we know as Main Hall was a fancy TB clinic for the well heeled long before it housed classrooms. I remember attending classes there, knowing full well the history, and wondering if it was haunted by long-dead tuberculosis patients!