HauntBound archive · catalog record
Reported phenomena, as catalogued
Built 1932–1936 when FDR was governor and visited by Eleanor Roosevelt, this WPA-era TB campus holds 240 New Deal murals — and hosts an October haunted attraction inside the buildings where patients died.
Murray Hill Dr, Mount Morris, NY 14510
Research updated September 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
$$
The campus is county government offices open during business hours; the annual 'Survive the Sanitorium' haunted event is ticketed in October.
Access
Wheelchair OK
1930s institutional campus buildings on a hilltop; paved roads and walkways between structures
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1936 · Built as New York State TB Sanatorium 1932-1936 · Eleanor Roosevelt and FDR Connection · 240 WPA New Deal Artworks (1937) · Largest Surviving WPA Art Collection in New York State
Tuberculosis was still a leading cause of death in New York State when Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt designated Murray Hill, a promontory above the village of Mount Morris in Livingston County, as the site of a new state sanatorium. Construction ran from 1932 to 1936, funded as part of the era's public-works investment in health infrastructure. Eleanor Roosevelt visited the site during the planning phase, according to the Livingston County New Deal Art Gallery's documentation.
The campus opened in 1936 as the Mount Morris Tuberculosis Sanitorium, designed in the institutional brick style common to New Deal-era public health buildings. The following year, 1937, the Works Progress Administration (later the Work Projects Administration) commissioned approximately 240 artworks for the campus — murals, paintings, and decorative pieces created by artists employed through the Federal Art Project. The collection is among the largest surviving concentrations of WPA art in New York State.
The sanatorium operated as a TB treatment facility through most of the tuberculosis era in New York. By the late 1960s, advances in antibiotic treatment had dramatically reduced the need for long-term sanatorium care, and the facility closed in 1971 after 35 years of operation. The state transferred the campus to Livingston County.
Livingston County converted the campus to county government offices. The New Deal art collection has been preserved and is displayed in the Livingston County New Deal Art Gallery, housed in the former sanatorium buildings. The Genesee Valley Council on the Arts oversees preservation efforts for the WPA artworks and operates programming in the historic spaces, including the annual October haunted-house event that draws on the campus's tuberculosis history.
Sources
The Mount Morris Tuberculosis Sanatorium's haunted reputation is unusual in that it is publicly embraced and commercially operationalized by its current stewards. The Genesee Valley Council on the Arts runs an annual ticketed haunted-house experience — 'Survive the Sanitorium' — inside the same campus buildings where tuberculosis patients lived and died between 1936 and 1971. The I Love NY tourism platform has promoted the event as one of the state's distinctive October attractions.
The LCN (Livingston County News) covered the event with a headline foregrounding both the history and the horror, describing the way the arts council uses the sanatorium's documented past as the atmospheric framework for the experience. The event's proceeds benefit the arts council and help fund preservation of the WPA art collection.
Outside the organized event context, informal accounts of atmospheric unease in the former patient wards circulate among county employees and occasional visitors to the campus buildings. Cold spots and a general sense of discomfort in the older sections of the complex are the most-cited phenomena, consistent with the pattern at other former TB facilities in the region. No named apparitions or specific documented encounters have been formally recorded.
Media Appearances
The Murray Hill Campus houses the Livingston County New Deal Art Gallery — approximately 240 WPA murals commissioned in 1937 for the tuberculosis sanatorium. The gallery is accessible during county office hours. The buildings that served as TB wards from 1936 to 1971 are partially accessible as county government spaces.
The Genesee Valley Council on the Arts operates an annual ticketed haunted-house experience inside the historic sanatorium buildings each October, drawing on the campus's documented tuberculosis history. Proceeds benefit the arts council and the New Deal art collection.
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