Founded in 1915, it was a municipal organization which included a sanatorium, dispensaries, and other auxiliary agencies essential in the control of tuberculosis.

[1] In 1911, the city of Chicago bought 158 acres (64 ha) to establish the sanitarium in what is now the North Park Village Nature Center.

[3] By the 1950s and 1960s, the incidence of tuberculosis was drastically reduced through improved public hygiene, vaccines and antimicrobial drugs.

When the sanitarium became underused by the 1970s, the city of Chicago decided to redevelop the property as North Park Village, to include senior citizen housing, a school for the developmentally disabled, a nature preserve, and parkland.

The "Open Air Cottages" for ambulant men and women patients formed two separate groups of buildings.