Abandoned Dansville: The Castle on the Hill

Have you ever wondered what the inside of a derelict sanatorium looks like? Have you ever had the urge to explore inside the distressed walls, to close your eyes and imagine its past? You are not alone. Abandoned sanatoriums plague the USA as badly as communicable diseases once did, eradicating people by the hundreds of thousands in the early 1900s.

Imagine a Victorian castle soaring to the heavens with wrought-iron balconies and crumbling bricks bleeding bright red. As it slowly vanishes from Mother Nature’s intoxicating grip, not even time can destroy its story. Within its dying walls, you’ll feel a family that once embraced its patients by water cure practices under the sixty-six-year Jackson reign. You’ll hear the lion’s roar preaching, Weakness is a crime as Bernarr Macfadden boasts exercise, fasting on the verge of starvation and healthy diet. His eccentricities made him the pioneer of physical culture and a publishing god, as one of the first men to distribute risque material with lewd cosmographs. This is the sanatorium’s story as the abandoned Castle on the Hill in Dansville, New York.