The government of Virginia acquired the site in 1914. When it officially opened in 1920, Blue Ridge Sanatorium had room for 382 patients. The Wright Pavilion was sponsored by the
Grand Lodge of Virginia, on the condition that members of the Lodge were to receive preferential admission to the facility. Blue Ridge Sanatorium, along with other state-run medical institutions, was subject to
racial segregation.
Catawba Sanatorium (1908) and
Piedmont Sanatorium (1918) had previously been established in Virginia for the treatment of tuberculosis. Black tuberculosis patients in the Charlottesville area were required to travel to Piedmont Sanatorium, as Blue Ridge Sanatorium operated from the beginning under a whites-only admissions policy. While the 1920s saw Blue Ridge Sanatorium establish a
preventorium for pretubercular white children, "there were no sanatorium beds dedicated for African American children, even those with active disease, in or around Charlottesville until 1940," when Piedmont Sanatorium began to admit children. The development of
antibiotics against tuberculosis in 1946 was the beginning of the end for many American sanatoriums, as most began to see patient numbers dwindling. No new patients were admitted to Blue Ridge Sanatorium after 1962, and in 1978 the site was turned over to the
University of Virginia, which renamed the facility
Blue Ridge Hospital.
Vamik Volkan served as medical director of Blue Ridge Hospital from 1978 to 1996, and was responsible for founding the Center for the Study of Mind and Human Interaction there in 1988. Many of the surviving buildings were reportedly deteriorating as of 2002, and a tentative proposal from
Monticello to acquire the site and demolish many buildings drew strenuous protests from the university community and local historians. ==Notes==