South Mountain Restoration Center – Mont Alto PA

Description

“This project was undertaken to replace about 60 frame buildings which had been constructed at Mont Alto since 1907 and which were obsolete as well as fire hazards. Four new fireproof structures had already been built by the State with the assistance of the P.W.A. This program included the main hospital, the nurses’ home, a women’s-help dormitory, a garage, a kitchen and dining-hall building, the children’s hospital, alterations and additions to the powerhouse, the steam distribution system, sewers, and the sewage disposal plant. The main hospital is six stories and a basement in height with a partial seventh story. It has a volume of 3,260,000 cubic feet and accommodates 350 men and 350 women patients. The nurses’ home has a capacity of 125 nurses, the women’s-help dormitory holds 125 and the children’s hospital accommodates 300 patients. All the buildings are fireproof and have exterior walls of red brick trimmed with stone. The main hospital was completed in August 1939 at a construction cost of $1,832,123 and a project cost of $2,056,868. The estimated construction cost of the entire project was $4,070,939 and its project cost was $4,425,371.”
(Short and Brown)

“In the 1950s, patients could leave the hospital within months as opposed to years. In 1956 until 1968, the hospital was renamed Dr. Samuel G. Dixon. The Samuel G. Dixon State Hospital retained many of the same rules and regulations of previous years with more critical patients being housed in Unit 1. Despite the amount of daily activity at the sanatorium, signs were visible that its time as a tuberculosis facility had passed and in 1963, the sanatorium newsletter Spunk produced its final edition. In 1965, the sanatorium became the South Mountain Geriatric Center and in February 1966, the Department of Health announced its intent to phase out tuberculosis treatment at the sanitarium to focus more on geriatric patients being housed in mental hospitals. The sanatoriums name was changed one final time in 1968 to its current name of South Mountain Restoration Center. After a high patient count of about 1,100 in 1970, the center stabilized to approximately 800 and by the early 1990s, the patient census dropped to 400. In 1992, a company by the name of Vision Quest opened a camp for troubled youths on the grounds and in October 1994, the Cornell Abraxas Leadership Development Program opened a residential training at the center similar to a military school. This group expanded to Unit 3 once all remaining residents were moved to Unit 1 and in 1997, the Secure Treatment Unit, which houses repeat offender youths, opened behind the Nurses Home.”
(www.asylumprojects.org)

This facility has gone through multiple incarnations and functions over the years. The South Mountain Restoration Center is the most recent, but when the PWA was involved in building, it was referred to as the South Mountain Tuberculosis Sanatorium.