Hendricks-Laws Sanatorium / Roger Bacon Seminary
El Paso, El Paso County, Texas
Marker Inscription
The Hendricks-Laws Sanatorium, built in 1914, was a tuberculosis hospital under the supervision of two El Paso physicians, Charles M. Hendricks and James Laws. At the time, many doctors believed that most lung diseases could be treated successfully in a high, dry and sparsely vegetated climate. El Paso, a railway hub next to the Franklin Mountains, was one of several cities in the American West that became major tuberculosis-treatment centers, attracting patients from across the United States. The Hendricks-Laws Sanatorium housed El Paso’s only bilateral artificial pneumothorax device, a machine that collapsed a patient’s lung, allowing it to rest and recuperate. Sanatoriums declined in popularity during the 1930s as doctors began to treat tuberculosis patients locally and disappeared entirely when effective antibiotics became available the following decade. The Hendricks-Laws Sanatorium closed in 1940. During and after the Mexican Revolution (1910-1920), El Paso became home to thousands of Mexican refugees fleeing political and religious persecution. Among those refugees were the Franciscan priests of the province of the Holy Gospel, who left Mexico City and moved to El Paso to train catholic priests and to serve the city’s growing Hispanic population. The Franciscan order purchased the former sanatorium and transformed it into the Roger Bacon Franciscan Seminary. For more than seven decades, the seminary has educated young men for the priesthood.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Built in 1914, the Hendricks-Laws Sanatorium rose during an era when doctors believed tuberculosis could be beaten by fresh, dry desert air—and El Paso, a rail hub in the shadow of the Franklin Mountains, drew sufferers from across the country. The hospital even housed the city's only bilateral pneumothorax machine, which deliberately collapsed a lung to let it heal. When antibiotics ended the sanatorium age, the building found a second life: Franciscan priests who had fled Mexico during the Revolution bought it and turned it into the Roger Bacon Seminary, training clergy for El Paso's growing Hispanic congregations.
Why it matters
The site knits together two great American stories—the western TB-cure migration that built entire cities, and the wave of Mexican refugees whose faith and institutions reshaped the border Southwest.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the early twentieth century, before antibiotics, tuberculosis was one of the deadliest diseases in America — and one of the most feared. With no cure available, doctors placed their hope in climate. The prevailing belief held that lung disease could be beaten in a high, dry, sparsely vegetated place, and so sufferers set out across the country in search of healing air.
El Paso was ideally positioned to answer that call. A major railway hub sitting in the dry country beside the Franklin Mountains, it became one of several cities in the American West that grew into major tuberculosis-treatment centers, drawing patients from across the United States. When this sanatorium was built in 1914, it was part of that hopeful, health-seeking migration.
The same years brought upheaval from the south. The Mexican Revolution, which convulsed the country from 1910 to 1920, sent thousands of refugees fleeing political and religious persecution across the border. El Paso, right at the crossing, became home to many of them — an influx that would reshape the city and, as it happened, this very building.
People & events
The sanatorium was built in 1914 under the supervision of two El Paso physicians, Charles M. Hendricks and James Laws. It was a serious medical facility for its time, housing the city's only bilateral artificial pneumothorax device — a machine that deliberately collapsed a patient's lung so that it could rest and recuperate. In an age with no drug to kill the bacterium, this was cutting-edge care, an attempt to buy the body time to heal itself.
But the sanatorium era was already living on borrowed time. Through the 1930s, as doctors increasingly treated tuberculosis patients closer to home, the great destination hospitals declined, and when effective antibiotics arrived the following decade the model vanished almost entirely. This sanatorium closed in 1940.
Its second life came from the refugees of the revolution. Among those who had fled Mexico were the Franciscan priests of the province of the Holy Gospel, who left Mexico City for El Paso to train priests and to serve the city's growing Hispanic population. The Franciscan order purchased the former hospital and transformed it into the Roger Bacon Franciscan Seminary, which for more than seven decades has educated young men for the priesthood.
Its place in the American story
This site knits together two great American stories in a single building. The first is the tuberculosis-cure migration that quite literally built cities across the West — a chapter in which desert air was medicine, and railroads carried the sick toward the hope of recovery. Whole communities grew up around that hope before science made it obsolete.
The second is the story of the border as a place of refuge and renewal. The Mexican Revolution was one of the defining upheavals of the early twentieth century, and the people it displaced carried their faith, their institutions, and their skills north. In El Paso those newcomers reshaped the religious and cultural life of the border Southwest.
What makes this building remarkable is that it holds both stories at once. The rise and fall of a whole medical philosophy, and the arrival of refugees who turned an emptied hospital into a house of learning — two currents of American history meeting under one roof, with the second giving new purpose to what the first left behind.
If you visit
Look at this building as a place with two lives. Its walls first sheltered patients who had traveled far in search of clean, dry mountain air, and later sheltered young men studying for the priesthood — a single structure that changed its whole reason for being.
Take in the setting: the dry country beside the Franklin Mountains, the very climate that once drew the sick here in hope. That landscape is not just scenery; it is the reason the sanatorium existed at all, a piece of medical history you can feel in the air.
If you're tracing El Paso's layered past — its role as a health destination, its place on a border shaped by revolution and refuge — this is a rich and thought-provoking stop. Read the full inscription to catch how the two histories meet, and let the quiet of the place invite a moment's reflection on how buildings, like cities, are remade by the people who need them.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · Charles M. Hendricks
- · James Laws
Related events
- · Mexican Revolution
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