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Home›Dose of History›Original Bethany Home Was Early 1900s Tuberculosis Sanitarium

Original Bethany Home Was Early 1900s Tuberculosis Sanitarium

By Andrea Aker
January 5, 2010
5284
8

Excerpt from Valley 101: A Slightly Skewed Guide to Living in Arizona, a collection of Clay Thompson’s columns for The Arizona Republic. (Originally published January 2, 2000.)

Q: I admit that I’m not new to the Valley, but I have a burning question which in all my 36 years, I cannot answer. How did Bethany Home Road get its name? Is there such a place as “Bethany Home’’? I can understand how Camelback, Washington, Central, Indian School and just about all the other major thoroughfares got named, but not Bethany Home. Do you know?

Bethany Home RoadA: Do we know? Do we know? Do you think the state’s largest newspaper, a powerful media colossus such as Phoenix Newspapers Inc., a newspaper for the new millennium, would blithely hand over the awesome responsibility of teaching the Valley 101 course to someone who didn’t know something as simple as that? It is to laugh. Ha, ha.

Actually, no, we don’t know. Or at least we didn’t know until we asked around a bit.

We did know this much: It had something to do with tuberculosis.

Tuberculosis used to be a big business in Arizona. Around the turn of the century—you know, it just occurred to us that we can’t say that anymore without saying which century — tuberculosis patients routinely were sent to Arizona to be cured by the clean, dry air. Sometimes this worked and sometimes it didn’t.

The Sunnyslope area — which then was well north of the Phoenix city limits — was the site of many tuberculosis sanitariums, and Scottsdale was once known as “White City” because of all the white tents where the tuberculosis patients lived.

The historian Marshall Trimble told us this when we called up to ask him the Bethany Home question. He knows everything. He knows Dick Lynch, who is a Valley historian who actually knew the answer to the Bethany Home question.

According to Lynch, the Bethany Home was a tuberculosis sanitarium operated in the early 1900s by a religious organization near what is now 15th Avenue and Bethany Home Road. Hence, the name.

Bethany, as you know, is an ancient town near Jerusalem at the foot of the Mount of Olives. In Hebrew, it means roughly “house of late-season green figs,” according to our dictionary.

And while we’re on the subject, for any really, really new newcomers, Indian School Road takes its name from a boarding school for Native Americans that the federal government operated at Central Avenue and Indian School Road until 1990. Much of the site is slowly being converted into a city park.

Excerpt from Valley 101: A Slightly Skewed Guide to Living in Arizona, a collection of Clay Thompson’s columns for The Arizona Republic. (Originally published January 2, 2000.)

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8 comments

  1. SaraD 12 January, 2014 at 16:35 Reply

    For me, this subject begs a different question.

    When we moved to the Valley in 1961, we heard discussed many times, that there was a TB sanitorium just north of what is now Curry Road, in the hills between College Ave. and Mill Ave. The sanitorium became a children’s hospital – I thought Phoenix Children’s Hospital (PCH), which was moved to Good Samaritan Hospital in the 1980s.

    One reason I have this memory is that one of my teachers used it to explain the difference between a sanitorium and a sanitarium – although it appears now that the terms are more regional than actually different in definition.

    When I look at the history of PCH, it seems to begin with the 1978 sprouting of the idea to locate a children’s hospital within an existing major hospital, making no mention of the location in the hills. In fact, it states that Phoenix did not have a dedicated children’s hospital. Yet, I distinctly remember the references to the sanitorium, and the later children’s hospital, in the hills.

    I would love to have this confusion about the history and nature of the institution on Curry Road cleared up.

  2. Curt 8 December, 2015 at 15:43 Reply

    The old Childrens hospital was located at Mill and Curry in Tempe. The building is still there, but it’s no longer a childrens hospital. Childrens hospitals moved to Banner Desert Cardons and I think there’s one in Phoenix somewhere too. I pass it all the time on the way to work and the building still brings back memories, because it was a trip from our small town to Phoenix/Mesa.

    We moved to Arizona in 1974 and I had a surgery at that hospital in 1975. We went there often because I had a condition that I needed a lot of follow up visits. I remember crossing the Mill Ave bridge to get there and watching the planes coming in to Sky Harbor. It’s also right next to the zoo. Playground outside wasn’t have bad either.

    I don’t remember hearing that it was ever a sanitorium or anything other than a childrens hospital. I’m not sure what the building is used for now but it’s definitely still there. I don’t remember it being a creepy place like old sanitoriums are usually portrayed. The only scary thing I remember is big scary nurses coming to my room to give me a shot – (oh yes, this nurse was the scary type – she was huge and not all that nice).

    • Jim 13 January, 2020 at 15:51 Reply

      Article says Bethny Home was at 15th ave, trivia states was at 16th street ?

  3. Sharon Blanchard 4 January, 2018 at 10:21 Reply

    My mother in law was raised in a tuberculosis sanitation where her mother died called Harwood Place. It was somehow connected to the Phoenix Indian school and I assume to it’s superintendent Harwood Hall.

  4. Lois Schwarting 11 March, 2018 at 10:37 Reply

    I remember having a friend’s daughter was in that hospital during Jr High had a rod placed in back because of scoliosis diagnosis. A few years later while working at ASU I went to that BLDG for an interview when new HE office opening ….so I suspect that BLDG had become part of ASU.

  5. L. Luna E 17 December, 2018 at 21:18 Reply

    I was a there as a child I remember being on the same room with my male cousin. We had several.family member there including. My mother. My uncle had very poor health and he passed T.b. to us. I can clearly remover the stainless steel crib rails..I must of been around 4 male cousin 7.

  6. David Paul 15 January, 2020 at 20:17 Reply

    The Bethany Home TB Sanitarium was actually at present day 15th Street & Bethany Home…not 15th Ave.
    Not sure if this was an incorrection or just a typo.

  7. John Hamilton 21 April, 2020 at 18:17 Reply

    Is there anyway to find out who was a patient at the Harwood Place Sanatorium in 1900-1902.

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