Abandoned Saratoga County Homestead Sanatorium

Based on my experience, sanatoriums–hospitals that treat patients with Tuberculosis which was once thought to be cured with fresh air and sunlight–carry a lighter psychic energy than the ruins of sanitariums, typically to care for the mentally ill. I’m not challenging google search results that ultimately claim both to be interchangeable, to a semantic battle. I just have explored the remains of both and that is most often the case.

And to continue to challenge Google wisdom (oxymoron), today’s ruins, Saratoga County Homestead, is not the ghost-filled place of murder and historic ill treatment of patients. It was a hospital created to treat Tuberculosis for women, men, children–everybody. It is difficult to imagine the fear related to this bacterial infection that, at its peak, killed 1 in 7 people in the United States. The infected who could afford it got treated at places like Saratoga County Homestead; it wasn’t a place for the misunderstood, misdiagnosed and destitute to fester away… those are the sanitariums.

Opening in 1914, the sanatorium was a small wooden structure. As need grew the 100-bed brick structure that continues to sit on the property was built to meet demands. After 1944, when antibiotics were invented, complexes like the Saratoga County Homestead were deemed unnecessary. For all intents and purposes, the property has had no use since its closing and its the property owner from 1982-2019 owed $60K in taxes when the county repossessed it. It was recently purchased at auction for the bargain price of $55K. The new owner has a variety of plans for the property, but the man from Texas will have to deal with the $1.7 million lien on it from the EPA for abating the asbestos in 2016.

Now in 2021, it sits still in waiting. Access points are plenty and, inside, some wonderful decay. Here is what I saw, starting with the caretaker’s house.

Onward to the brick structure.

(Source)