I was just on a nostalgia kick and was searching “Terrell Heights.” I read your (recent) article, and it mentions a TB hospital. Did you know there used to be a housing area for employees of the state hospital and TB hospital? I lived there from 1960-1965. My mom was an RN at the hospital. Dad was the laundry manager. I went to St. Cecilia’s, and the bus picked kids up in Terrell Heights. 

  – Robbie Bourne, Little Rock, Arkansas

There are a lot of San Antonio people and places with “Terrell” in their names – thanks mostly to Frederick Terrell (discussed here June 27), a doctor who left his practice to deal full time in real estate and other businesses, while simultaneously getting involved in local politics as an alderman and mayor.

The municipality of Terrell Hills began with the sale of his Terrell Farms land, and the contiguous Terrell Heights subdivision, a San Antonio neighborhood, derives its name from its elder neighbor. Besides these North Side namesakes, there’s also Terrell Wells on the South Side, much closer to the other places you mention.

St. Cecilia’s Catholic School, a parochial school in operation from 1921 until 2015, was at 118 Lowell St. near South Presa Street. 

The San Antonio State Hospital – known as the Southwestern Insane Asylum until 1925 – also was located south of downtown, beyond the city limits when it opened in 1892 at what was later known as 5900 S. Presa St.

While the first state hospital here treated patients with both mental illness and tuberculosis (in a separate section), a new San Antonio State Tuberculosis Hospital was built “on the south end of the San Antonio State Hospital grounds,” according to the San Antonio Express, Dec. 15, 1953. Dual-diagnosis patients from the older hospital were moved to the specialty institution on Southeast Military Drive between South Presa and South New Braunfels Avenue.

“Staff housing has been offered on the San Antonio State Hospital campus since it opened in 1892 and is still available in a limited capacity today for specific positions and circumstances,” said James Rivera, spokesman for Texas Health and Human Services, which owns and operates the hospital.

“The availability of staff housing has varied over time based on the facility’s operational needs and workforce considerations,” Rivera said. “Providing on-campus or nearby housing helped support workforce needs and ensured staff were available to provide care for the individuals served by the hospital. Historically, census records were taken at our facilities and included census data for staff who lived on hospital campuses

RELATED: San Antonio State Hospital cemetery

On the other side of town, in the Sunset Ridge Addition – near but not in Terrell Heights – was the Woodmen of the World hospital (covered here June 11, 2016), which opened in 1923 to provide medical care for tuberculosis. At that time, tuberculosis was treated primarily with lengthy “rest cures.”

The Woodmen’s hospital admitted only members of the fraternal-benefits organization, who came from all over the country to stay for months. It closed in 1956 as more tuberculosis patients elected to stay home and try newer drug treatments.

At the same time, the newer state TB hospital expanded its reach to serve a 200-mile area including South Texas and the Hill Country. An outpatient clinic opened in 1969 to provide nonresidential care, and in 1971, it shifted its mission to include care for patients with chronic respiratory conditions such as emphysema and was renamed the San Antonio Chest Hospital.

RELATED: Woodmen of the World TB hospital

The new name would “give the hospital broader authority as well as do away with the stigma of being in a TB hospital,” said Bexar County State Rep. Bill Finck in the San Antonio Light, March 8, 1971. That’s 50 years after the Woodmen ran into opposition from people who didn’t want a TB facility in Sunset Ridge and 25 years after Terrell Heights’ restrictive covenants banned professional caretaking for TB patients.

So the TB hospital near Terrell Heights was gone by the time you went to St. Cecilia’s. Maybe the bus stopped at Terrell Wells? 

There was a Terrell Wells Health Resort there – also started by Frederick Terrell around the turn of the last century – but that was mostly for drinking from sulfur springs and taking mud baths to benefit a host of ailments, not unlike nearby Hot Wells. By your time, it had faded into a care home for the elderly. 

The community that grew up around the old hot springs was long subsumed into San Antonio, and its school – ancestor of present-day Terrell Wells Middle School – merged into the Harlandale Independent School District. 

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This article originally published at San Antonio’s state hospitals served two specialties from South Side campus.