Battle Creek Sanitarium

The Battle Creek Sanitarium opened in 1866 as the Western Health Reform Institute. The institute was founded on health principles advocated by the Seventh-Day Adventist Church. In 1876 Dr. John Harvey Kellogg became the medical superintendent at the sanitarium. Kellogg’s many innovations included the use of radiation therapy for cancer patients and the invention of flaked cereal. The sanitarium burned in 1902; the following year a six-story Italian Renaissance Revival-style building, designed by Dayton, Ohio, architect Frank M. Andrews, was constructed. Kellogg’s brother W. K. Kellogg worked at the sanitarium for twenty-six years before leaving to establish the Battle Creek Toasted Corn Flake Company. The Battle Creek Sanitarium is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

[Back]: In 1928 the Battle Creek Sanitarium was enlarged with a fourteen-story “towers” addition and dining room annex designed by M. J. Morehouse of Chicago. After the stock market crashed in 1929, business declined; the facility went into receivership in 1933. The sanitarium continued to occupy the site until 1942 when the U. S. Army purchased the buildings and established the Percy Jones General Hospital, named for an army surgeon whose thirty year career included commanding ambulance units during World War I. The hospital specialized in neurosurgery, plastic surgery and the fitting of artificial limbs. Approximately one hundred thousand military patients were treated at the hospital before it closed permanently in 1953. In 1954 the building became the Battle Creek Federal Center.