Glendale Sanitarium, the health spa before Botox
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It’s not my vision of home away from home, that’s for sure. Read about what went on inside John Harvey Kellogg’s health retreats, and you may never be able to eat your Raisin Bran Crunch again. But as Lost L.A. columnist Sam Watters reminds us, a century ago, Southern California was to health what Silicon Valley is to high tech today. “Single-owner guest houses, tent cities and full-service hotel-sanitariums offered services at varying prices in a ‘sanitarium belt’ that stretched from Los Angeles to San Diego,” Watters says. In Glendale in 1905, after recession hit and a newly built hotel never got a chance to open, the property was snapped up by the Battle Creek Sanitarium, the Michigan health retreat where Kellogg was superintendent. The Glendale Hotel became the Glendale Sanitarium, and customers flocked from around the country to get healthy. It’s a great story, one that Watters spins in his latest Lost L.A. column. While our representatives bicker about healthcare on Capitol Hill, the piece is a reminder of just how long good health has been more a quest than a certainty.
-- Craig Nakano
Image: Postcard courtesy of Sam Watters
