Pine Camp Tuberculosis Hospital

Before the Pine Camp Tuberculosis Hospital was established, the property was included in a one-hundred-sixty-seven-acre wooded tract of land that was once the city farm. The farm was in the elevated countryside north of Richmond’s city center. A wooded tract of land at the Northern end of the city farm was granted to the Richmond Tuberculosis Camp Society for the development of a tuberculosis sanatorium which opened in 1910. 

During the mid-twentieth century, tuberculosis was one of the world’s most feared and difficult to manage diseases. In 1865, the deadly nature of the disease became fully known to doctors during the period. Tuberculosis attacked the white blood cells; the lungs began to dissolve, and death was painful and protracted. The tubercle bacillus bacterium was isolated in 1882. Since the disease was highly contagious, isolation in pleasant surroundings was one of the first steps towards treatment. Doctors prescribed long bouts of rest for sufferers of tuberculosis, as restful lungs would also the tubercle bacillus to isolate and the infection would be confined. Fresh air was thought to be an effective treatment method as well. A system of public and private sanatoriums was developed across the country where patients often lived for years under a strict regimen of isolation and complete or moderate inactivity. 

The beginnings of the Pine Camp Tuberculosis Hospital can be dated to a request by Richmond’s public health officer for $10,000 from the city to combat what was known as the “White Plague”. No money was appropriated, so private citizens took up the cause for themselves. The Tuberculosis Camp Society was founded in 1909 to discuss the founding of a charity hospital for urban victims of the disease. Frances Scott, the president of the Sheltering Arms Hospital, Richmond’s premier charity hospital, was concerned about the lack of treatment available for tuberculosis patients at that institution. She and her brothers, Frederick W. and Thomas B. Scott were the first officers of the Tuberculosis Camp Society.  

The first buildings were an administration building and a pavilion where patients lived largely in the open-air year-round and received other medical treatments. The surviving buildings on the property represent the secondary period of development at Pine Camp from 1917 to 1952. In 1916, control of the camp was turned over to the city of Richmond, and the initial structures were augmented by more substantial and medically sophisticated buildings. In 1932, the surviving Central Building was put into service. 

Pine Camp Tuberculosis Hospital, National Register of Historic Places. Accessed December 10th 2020. https://catalog.archives.gov/id/41683107.

Pine Camp Tuberculosis Hospital, Wikipedia. Accessed January 21st 2021. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pine_Camp_Tuberculosis_Hospital.