Blue Ridge Sanatorium: Preserving the Landscape of Healing

The Piedmont enjoys a highly regarded reputation for its historic sites and its world-class preservation practices. The well-preserved homes of presidents and extraordinary examples of architecture, known worldwide, dominate our landscape. We see daily the many ways in which preservation work enriches the lives of people who live in, work in, and visit our community. Numerous residents in the Piedmont understand quite well the cultural value and importance of historic preservation. Despite this reality, the Piedmont can also prove to be surprisingly infertile ground for preservation. The very prominence of well-preserved sites in our locale at times militates against the development of a broad based preservation movement. Some community leaders and residents suggest that we have already taken care of historic preservation; places that do not rise to the level of a presidential home or fit comfortably into the accepted canon of high-style architecture seem suspect when preservation is advocated. Yet the history that is accessible through presidential homes and high-style architecture is severely constricted and leaves huge swaths of past experience and culture beyond reach. To the extent that history and preservation help shape current understandings of, and actions in, the world, a narrow preservation movement translates into truncated possibilities for an informed citizenry. Efforts over the last fifteen years to preserve parts of the Blue Ridge Tuberculosis Sanatorium, located on a site below Monticello and Michie Tavern, highlight some of the difficulties inherent in pursuing a broader preservation agenda. At Blue Ridge, the Commonwealth of Virginia, with close cooperation of the University of Virginia, opened its premier public tuberculosis sanatorium in 1920. In an inSee Blue Ridge on page 2. Blue Ridge Sanatorium: Preserving the Landscape of Healing Daniel Bluestone