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The facility at Southton was *never* any form of asylum or childrens hospital. Im continually amazed at the amount of misinformation out there regarding this. Ive done a huge amount of research on this topic. The Bexar County Home for the Aged and the School for Boys as well as the County 'poor farm' were all located on the same tract of land in south Bexar County. In my opinion, it was easier to keep all the 'undesireables' in one location. The school for boys and the home for the aged were built in 1915 with the HFTA replacing the dilapititated poor farm that was a civil war era facility. A smallpox and TB colony were also added to the property at a later date. In the mid 30's, the School for Boys was basically abandoned and a different facility (WPA project) was built about a mile away, which still stands today but is a drug/alcohol rehab facility. Bexar County had a horrible history with TB, so much so that we were losing hundreds of people a year to the disease back in the teens and twenties. Eventually, the SA Chest Hospital was built and some of the buildings from the Southton location were relocated to the new location of the hospital. The old TB hospital was razed sometime in 1986. The debris was bulldozed to an area on the Southton property.
The Home for the Aged (the poor farm) had a number of problems going on such as complaints of poor care of the residents as well as them not being fed properly. There was a dairy farm located on the property and the running complaint was that the staff ate quite well, receiving milk several times a week, while the residents did not. Additionally, the property also supported a county cemetery and for a number of years, all of the indigent people, unidentified people, stillborn children from area hospitals etc. were all buried there. This cemetery was later relocated to prepare for a pending sale of the property that, from what I can tell, never happened.
The property today is County property on the land managed by Bexar County Public Works. The facility and the property are strictly off limits and the Sheriff's Office does enforce the Criminal Trespass law. If you are caught there, you will go to jail no questions asked. Past that, the area is a high crime area and you are risking your safety, your vehicle etc. by hanging out there. As Halloween approaches, Sheriff's patrols will increase and on Halloween, the street will be closed completely except to residents of the area. If anyone has any questions, please contact me directly if you want.
Here's a link that adds to the confusion. Where do you get your information and dates. It sounds like this place has been used for a number of things....and served several purposes simultaneously. There were several buildings, and as you mentioned some have been torn down...which one isn't clear.
Here's two old postcards that show the Southwestern Insane Asylum, which is now the State Hospital. Neither one of these pictures are anything like the Southton Hospital.
I also would like to know what happened to the cemetery that was behind the Southton Hospital. It was quite large and showed up on a topo map of the military similar to the map above. The current aerials show the same field, but no signs of any burials. There must be a record of disinterring hundreds of remains somewhere.
I thought I had a ref to picture of the Southton facility....I'll keep looking.
Thanks, but I realized the so-called "insane asylum" wasn't exactly that which was why I put quotes around it.
Secondly, the OP's first question was "Is there an old abandoned haunted asylum in SA?" which leads me to believe they weren't looking for a place to stay (unless they like staying in abandoned buildings). If I got that wrong, I apologize; but from the post I believed the OP was looking for the infamous haunted "insane asylum" south of the missions...
But the Yorktown hospital looks pretty cool, I wonder why it wasn't brought up in the haunted thread...other than it is 75 mile away from SA...
No need to get defensive. We're basically agreeing, aren't we? Except we interpreted her intent differently. That's really up to her.
The Yorktown Hospital was not brought up in the haunted thread because it was not open to the public until recently. Victoria's Black Swan has been open for some time and offers the same kind of experience, if one's into paranormal investigating. No one has to 'stay over', but that is an option. Visiting is welcomed at both...which is what she asked for. I was providing options to the "haunted thread" where often exploring and visiting is not welcome. It's really not worth splitting hairs about.
Here's a link that adds to the confusion. Where do you get your information and dates.
Lots of digging at County Archives, interviews with County Employees (I work for the Sheriff's Office), genealogy research
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It sounds like this place has been used for a number of things....and served several purposes simultaneously. There were several buildings, and as you mentioned some have been torn down...which one isn't clear.
Well, the Home for the aged and the School for boys (detention facility) were built at the same time and they were both in operation at the same time. Ill have to check my information to try to remember when they ceased operations. Other facilities were built on the county property, such as the TB hospital.
Here's a link to the San Antonio State Chest Hospital, which is adjacent to the State Hospital. The story explains it all.
Thansk for the links...Ill check it out.
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I also would like to know what happened to the cemetery that was behind the Southton Hospital. It was quite large and showed up on a topo map of the military similar to the map above. The current aerials show the same field, but no signs of any burials. There must be a record of disinterring hundreds of remains somewhere.
Yes, the cemetery was disinterred in the mid 70's.
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I thought I had a ref to picture of the Southton facility....I'll keep looking.
Ive only been able to find one really good picture of the Home for the Aged when it was dedicated in 1915.
I went to this place the other day, and regret to say that there wasn't any law enforcement there patrolling the area. Therefore myself, my friends, and couple other groups of people were able to walk in and out of the property freely. I noticed that above the main entrance to the largest building it said "House for the Aged" like you guys were talking about. I had always heard that this place was an insane asylum and thought that this was odd. I had heard that this place was abandoned in 1996, and had been used as a fire department training station of some sorts after it was an asylum. This was because there were claims of finding fire report papers and records all over the place. Also people claim they found records of the supposed insane patients interred there, some of whom were guilty of criminal acts such as murder. I've also heard there were rooms with padded walls/ cages inside the main building. Can you shed any light on this TexasCovertCarry?
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While there may not have been police patrolling the facility, you had to have noticed the numerous 'No Trespassing' signs and the gentleman that lives across from the place is well known to call the police if he spots people on the property.
So whereas you may have gotten lucky with your adventure, it needs to be pointed out that what you did was illegal and that had you been caught, you would have been arrested (I understand the authorities have a 'zero tolerance' policy concerning trespassing there).
Just a warning for anyone who may be contemplating duplicating your actions...
I also think the haunted insane asylum is a bunch of nonsense. The people there were mentally debilitated and incapacitated, that is all. All trespassers should be hauled away instead of gawking around for a lot of the handicapped "souls" of individuuals. It always astounds how low human nature can stoop. These people are truly ignorants of the first order.
There was a state mental hospital on the property, the entrance nearer the corner of Hot Wells St. and Presa. I know this as I used to visit a good friend there in the early seventies whom had a big problem with glue and paint sniffing.
A brilliant musician but addicted to "huffing" as it is called in the local media. The S.A. patrolmen would arrest him up constantly as he wandered the streets in a complete stupor from the effects of the inhalants- The judges, after observing this behavior occur over and over, would commit him, there, to the state facility. It had a steel fence of iron bars across the front. The front gate to the institution was near the old Hot Wells Hotel sign that used to stand there, just south of the Hot Wells and Presa intersection on South Presa Rd.
I grew up near the northeast corner of New Braunfels and Military Dr. or
Loop 13, as Military Dr. was called back then. This was the site of the T.B. Hospital just across the street from Brooks Field and the State Mental Hospital. What else was there? If you would please.
I remember the paupers cemetery and the Mental Hospital and the T.B. Hospital. Where was Southton? Not on the same piece of property
or was it the same place ?
Thanks
Quote:
Originally Posted by TexasCovertCarry
The facility at Southton was *never* any form of asylum or childrens hospital. Im continually amazed at the amount of misinformation out there regarding this. Ive done a huge amount of research on this topic. The Bexar County Home for the Aged and the School for Boys as well as the County 'poor farm' were all located on the same tract of land in south Bexar County. In my opinion, it was easier to keep all the 'undesireables' in one location. The school for boys and the home for the aged were built in 1915 with the HFTA replacing the dilapititated poor farm that was a civil war era facility. A smallpox and TB colony were also added to the property at a later date. In the mid 30's, the School for Boys was basically abandoned and a different facility (WPA project) was built about a mile away, which still stands today but is a drug/alcohol rehab facility. Bexar County had a horrible history with TB, so much so that we were losing hundreds of people a year to the disease back in the teens and twenties. Eventually, the SA Chest Hospital was built and some of the buildings from the Southton location were relocated to the new location of the hospital. The old TB hospital was razed sometime in 1986. The debris was bulldozed to an area on the Southton property.
The Home for the Aged (the poor farm) had a number of problems going on such as complaints of poor care of the residents as well as them not being fed properly. There was a dairy farm located on the property and the running complaint was that the staff ate quite well, receiving milk several times a week, while the residents did not. Additionally, the property also supported a county cemetery and for a number of years, all of the indigent people, unidentified people, stillborn children from area hospitals etc. were all buried there. This cemetery was later relocated to prepare for a pending sale of the property that, from what I can tell, never happened.
The property today is County property on the land managed by Bexar County Public Works. The facility and the property are strictly off limits and the Sheriff's Office does enforce the Criminal Trespass law. If you are caught there, you will go to jail no questions asked. Past that, the area is a high crime area and you are risking your safety, your vehicle etc. by hanging out there. As Halloween approaches, Sheriff's patrols will increase and on Halloween, the street will be closed completely except to residents of the area. If anyone has any questions, please contact me directly if you want.
I went to this place the other day, and regret to say that there wasn't any law enforcement there patrolling the area. Therefore myself, my friends, and couple other groups of people were able to walk in and out of the property freely. I noticed that above the main entrance to the largest building it said "House for the Aged" like you guys were talking about. I had always heard that this place was an insane asylum and thought that this was odd. I had heard that this place was abandoned in 1996, and had been used as a fire department training station of some sorts after it was an asylum. This was because there were claims of finding fire report papers and records all over the place. Also people claim they found records of the supposed insane patients interred there, some of whom were guilty of criminal acts such as murder. I've also heard there were rooms with padded walls/ cages inside the main building. Can you shed any light on this TexasCovertCarry?
You were really lucky not to have encountered one of our patrol officers out there. This close to Halloween is no joke and they will arrest you for criminal trespass. That said, Ive been there dozens of times and Ive never seen a padded cell or 'cages'. When the facility was built, they intended it to be literally fireproof and what may have been interpreted as a padded room may well have been the tons of asbestos thats in the building. The county is currently proposing to raze the site but the cost for the proper disposal of the environmental issue is extremely expensive. The site was abandoned as a care facility sometime a while before 1996. The Fire Marshal used the former boys detention facility as a records storage building throughout the 80's. There are a number of records of patients from the Home for the Aged as well as old fire department evidence files laying about. Going back to the Home for the Aged, keep in mind that at the time (late teens early twenties and forward) people with mental illnesses were often just mixed in with others requiring care and an old age home/poor farm was no different. It was not uncommon to have mentally ill people mixed in with others. That said, these facilities were never intended to be any kind of 'asylum' but they did have some people living there that were mentally ill. Care for those types of people at that time was medieval and prehistoric by our standards today.
There was a state mental hospital on the property, the entrance nearer the corner of Hot Wells St. and Presa. I know this as I used to visit a good friend there in the early seventies whom had a big problem with glue and paint sniffing.
The property you are referencing is not the same property as the Home for the Aged. Its close by though (just down the street on Presa).
Quote:
A brilliant musician but addicted to "huffing" as it is called in the local media. The S.A. patrolmen would arrest him up constantly as he wandered the streets in a complete stupor from the effects of the inhalants- The judges, after observing this behavior occur over and over, would commit him, there, to the state facility. It had a steel fence of iron bars across the front. The front gate to the institution was near the old Hot Wells Hotel sign that used to stand there, just south of the Hot Wells and Presa intersection on South Presa Rd.
Yep. The San Antonio State Hospital still stands there and is currently our only "mental hospital" for the really sick and affected people.
Quote:
I grew up near the northeast corner of New Braunfels and Military Dr. or Loop 13, as Military Dr. was called back then. This was the site of the T.B. Hospital just across the street from Brooks Field and the State Mental Hospital. What else was there? If you would please.
This was the location of the 'new' TB hospital after the one at Southton was discontinued. As I understand it, they moved some of the smaller buildings from Southton to the location of what became the Chest Hospital.
Quote:
I remember the paupers cemetery and the Mental Hospital and the T.B. Hospital. Where was Southton? Not on the same piece of property
or was it the same place ?
Thanks
No, not the same place. The paupers cemetery and the TB hospital *were* at the Southton location. The mental hospital was, and still is, located at what is currently the San Antonio State Hospital on S. Presa. Here is a map for reference:
I think most places likethe Haunted Tracks, Insame Asyum, Donkey Lady Bridge, Chinese Graveyard, etc... are all urban legends like every major town has. I did some looking around on the web and found some areas I never thought of on the Mission City Paranormal website
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hello friend,
