The El Paso, Texas building that housed the Mt. Franklin Country Club, and then the Southern Baptist Sanatorium, was built in late Spring through Thanksgiving 1916. Work began on April 21, and wrapped up the day before the Holiday. The Country Club began to use the structure with a Thanksgiving Day Dedication, but did not have their official opening ceremonies until the Fourth of July, 1917.
The building stands today, mostly vacant, tucked in behind the Baptist Spanish Publishing House at 7000 Alabama. It was designed by the El Paso architectural firm of Gibson & Robertson. The Sanatorium's 1918-1919 additions and renovations were designed by the Chicago firm of Schmidt, Gardner and Martin. The Sanatorium opened Friday, March 7, 1919.
The Mt. Franklin Country Club had a short but glorious tenure in the building. The officers of the City-owned organization read like a who's who of the El Paso elite: J.H. Nations, President; Julius Krakauer, Vice President; U.S. Stewart, Treasurer; and Park Pittman, Secretary. Advertising for the Club was extensive, and it even included a shooting range and provided the necessary rifles. However, in a very short period of time they realized it could not compete with the busy and prestigious El Paso Country Club just a couple of miles to the south, closer to the city. By May of 1918 they filed for bankruptcy and had to sell the furniture and fixtures.
On May 12, 1918, the 134 acres held by the Country Club, including its building, was sold or donated to the Southern Baptist Church for the purpose of erecting a huge Sanatorium. The Tuberculosis pandemic of the early 1900s was reaching staggering proportions, and the Church's offer to build an additional Sanatorium in El Paso was welcomed. The land, worth an estimated $20,000 at the time, was donated and the building was sold to the church for $45,000.
The iconic Chicago, Ill. architectural firm of Schmidt, Gardner and Martin was hired to design the Hospital, with architectural elements to be based on the design of Gibson and Robertson's pre-existing Country Club building, which was to remain intact (and did. It's still there). The original sketch for the structure from the Chicago firm showed a staggering building complex substantially larger than what was actually built. In print marketing, the Sanatorium used the Architect's drawing rather than actual photographs of the facility. Perhaps they had hopes of expanding as they grew.
Renovations and new construction was completed for the Sanatorium on Friday, March 7, 1919, and the first 6 patients arrived the following Monday. H.F. Vermillion was the Superintendant, with C.W. Coutant, M.D., as the Medical Director.
The building design was classic Gibson and Robertson: a Mission/Spanish eclectic mix, with their signature 90 degree angles and parallel lines. It is very reminiscent of Charles Gibson's personal residence on Fort Boulevard, although it is lacking the snowstorm of Mission parapets, and adds some arched windows. Their interesting Brophy Apartment structure in Magoffin follows the same recipe: 90 degrees, parallel lines, no curves, yet well stocked with Spanish/Mission features. The Sanatorium additions from Schmidt, Gardner and Martin provide a very similar design, as requested, and include endless rows of pleasing, arched windows.
Recently I was able to take new photographs of the building, and it is sound but deteriorating. Some of the stucco is peeling off, revealing at places a rock wall and other places a brick wall. The wooden frames in the arched windows are rotting, and all of the roadways around the facility are deteriorating. The grounds are overcome with weeds and desert plants. The building presents an interesting dilemna - too expensive to demolish, yet too isolated to restore and use. Hidden behind the Publishing House, it is not visible enough to market to a large company. It is quite large - occupying the 134 acres mentioned above. Its only hope is to attract a single tenant that could utilize the entire complex - perhaps a warehouse or a museum - but its location is very poor.
The exterior bears the respective Architect's untouched design. The Sanatorium's interior courtyard is now covered with a roof, evidently a building addition, except for a small area on the west end of the complex that remains open-air. Of course, the Baptist Spanish Publishing House has erected their newer building, facing west towards Alabama, which now fronts the entire complex. The view from the front of the Gibson & Robertson Country Club building is striking, a beautiful panorama stretching for miles - it's easy to see why the location was selected.
The Sanatorium was built through the kindness and giving hearts of all levels of the citizenry of El Paso, in addition to donations that came in nation-wide from the Churches of the Southern Baptist Convention. H.F. Vermillion, who's brother was a Pastor in El Paso, traveled extensively before the Hospital was opened, especially on the east coast, passing out pictures of the building and hawking El Paso's excellent, Tuberculosis-beating weather. The Southern Baptist Sanatorium joined El Paso's St. Joseph's, Hendrick's, and Hotel Dieu in what seemed at the time an un-winnable war. By the early 20th Century, TB had already killed one in seven of all people that had ever lived.
Ironically, the Officers and Members of the Mount Franklin Country Club led the fundraising charge to build the Hospital. The heart of El Paso.
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Text, modern photography and research provided to the El Paso Sketch Club by Mark Stone. This historical narrative is derived from newspaper articles and City Directory entries accessed through the Library of Congress' Chronicling America project at https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/ and the University of North Texas (Denton) Digital Archives at https://texashistory.unt.edu/
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| Newspaper clipping showing image of the Country Club from the El Paso Herald, Saturday, June 30, 1917. The same picture was used for the Southern Baptist Sanatorium after its opening in March 1919. |
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| Photograph taken by Mark Stone 8/29/2020. This is the front of the Country Club/Sanatorium, facing east. Compare it to the previous image, the newspaper clipping. |
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| Photograph taken by Mark Stone 8/29/2020. What may have been the front entrance a looooong time ago. |
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| Photograph taken by Mark Stone 8/29/2020. |
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| An ad for the sanatorium from 1929, courtesy of etsy dot com at https://www.etsy.com/.../1929-ad-baptist-sanatorium-el.... In the image, all of the buildings at the far end of the courtyard (the two hipped roof buildings at either end, the two small white buildings at ground level with arched windows, the space between these white buildings, and the rear of the long wall to the right, the last two or three arches) are extant. Most of the visible courtyard in the foreground is the site of a large addition to the building. |
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| Another picture, a postcard from MyPostcard, with the same identifying features as the previous image. |
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| Zoom in of an advertisement for the Sanatorium from the 1922 El Paso City Directory. This picture is the sketch from the architectural firm of Schmidt, Gardner and Martin; the area circled in red is what was actually completed, quite a bit smaller than the plan. We conjecture that they planned to continue building through the years. |
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| Photograph taken by Mark Stone 8/29/2020. Pictured is the southern end of one of the hipped-roof buildings on the west end of the complex. Note that the structure to the left is newer. |
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| Photograph taken by Mark Stone 8/29/2020. This is the southern-facing wall of the complex - part of the Schmidt, Gardner and Martin designed addition. This part of the building was completed probably in late 1918. |
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| Photograph taken by Mark Stone 8/29/2020. The southern facade again. |
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| Photograph taken by Mark Stone 8/29/2020. A closeup of some of the building deterioration. This is part of the southern facade. Note the rotting wood in the windows. |
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| Photograph taken by Mark Stone 8/29/2020. The southern entrance. |
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| Photograph taken by Mark Stone 8/29/2020. The southern entrance to the original Country Club building, erected in 1916. |
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| Photograph taken by Mark Stone 8/29/2020. The southern entrance to the 1916 Country Club. |
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| Photograph taken by Mark Stone 8/29/2020. The front (facing east) of the building. Note the deterioration, and yet the structure retains its character. This was the original Country Club, designed by Gibson and Robertson. |
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| Photograph taken by Mark Stone 8/29/2020. |
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| Photograph taken by Mark Stone 8/29/2020. |
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| Photograph taken by Mark Stone 8/29/2020. The northern end of the front of the Country Club. |
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| Photograph taken by Mark Stone 8/29/2020. |
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| Photograph taken by Mark Stone 8/29/2020. This is a Mission style building on the property, just to the southwest of the main complex. It was built probably as part of the Sanatorium expansion in 1918-1919, because it is pictured in the Chicago architect's sketch. It is badly deteriorating. |
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| The eastern end of the small building. Photograph taken by Mark Stone 8/29/2020. |
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| The eastern end of the small building. Photograph taken by Mark Stone 8/29/2020. |
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| Photograph taken by Mark Stone 8/29/2020. A detail of the badly deteriorating small structure. |
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| Photograph taken by Mark Stone 8/29/2020. This is the extreme northeast corner of the Sanatorium expansion. |
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| Photograph taken by Mark Stone 8/29/2020. The eastern end of the north facade. |
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| Photograph taken by Mark Stone 8/29/2020. The western end of the north facade. Note the hipped-roof building, part of the Sanatorium expansion, which appears in the included postcards. |
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| Photograph taken by Mark Stone 8/29/2020. A detail of the hipped-roof building at the northwest end of the complex. |
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| Interesting finial repeated throughout the design - Photograph taken by Mark Stone 8/29/2020. |
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| Photograph taken by Mark Stone 8/29/2020. The front of the Mt. Franklin Country Club slash Southern Baptist Sanatorium viewed from new Fort Bliss housing downhill. Soldiers get to see this all the time, and from a distance it is quite striking. |
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| Photograph taken by Mark Stone 8/29/2020. The small building just to the southwest of the complex viewed from the new Fort Bliss housing area just downhill |
