This Used To Be...#6


the site of the Pottenger Sanatorium. Now it's a neighborhood of homes called Canyon Crest.

Comments

Alessandra said…
I've really enjoyed your favorite homes so far. All your choices are also mine. I walk all over northeast Monrovia and find that the architecture of the older homes is really stunning.

The only thing that would have made this post even better is a link to see what the Pottanger Sanitorium looked like back in the day. The Canyon Crest neighborhood is nice, if somewhat bland and tract-like.
Keith said…
I've been trying to find an image of what it looked like but have been surprised that there's nothing good available. I've seen a couple of nice postcards before though, so I'll keep looking.

A neighbor talked me into going up there not long before it was torn down. Buildings were in bad shape, medical equipment left behind, files scattered all over the floor. Very creepy.
Anonymous said…
I now live in 300 block of Canyon Boulevard, Monrovia (but very soon moving to Maine)... I, too, remember riding my bike up to the site and wandering around amid old patient files and general ruins... then later, riding my buckskin horse on a loop that took in the whole site of the sanatorium. There were grassy pastures, wildflowers, lots of trees.. now just houses, alas. So much history, so many interesting and famous people having passed through there... now just houses.
Meshel Laura said…
It is nice to read these comments about the sanatorium. It does sadden me that things where left like they were and not more was saved. I regret that I did not record my mother-in-law's stories about her growing up on the Sanatorium grounds. She is a Pottenger and shared so many stories of the history of their family. What is sad that the City of Monrovia and my family did not foresee what or how the Sanatorium would be part of American History.

I wish there would of been a bigger fight to have kept it up and restored for something else to serve others. Joseph Elbert Pottenger was my husbands grandfather and the head Pathlogist and brother to Francis Marian Pottenger. The story on how the Pottenger Brothers joined together to fight to find a cure for this horrible disease at that time, tuberculosis, is truely an American Love Story. I am very proud to be married into the Pottenger Family and that my daughters will now pass this rich history onto their children. I hope one day to compile all the pictures I do have of the sanatorium grounds and post them on the internet.

Thank you for the stories.

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