Kinder Methods of Treatment

The Independent APRIL 5„ 2007

After Dr. John W. Robertson graduated from UC Berkeley in 1877, he continued there at the medical school and received his M.D. in 1880. By 1894 when he came to Livermore, he had become an inter nationally known psychiatrist. He bought the Livermore Collegian Institute building on College Avenue from Professor James D. SmitI in 1894 and later the neighboring mansion and grounds belonging to William M. Mendenhall. Robertson founded a sanitarium, a private 120-bed psychiatric hospital, at the site. He added many buildings in the area; the College Avenue entry way to the complex, lined with palm trees, led to an oval driveway with the Mendenhall house at the back. Robertson’s large shingled Victorian home was built or the southwest comer of College and South L Street In 1903.

In 1902 he also acquired property to the east, and several years later he erected a large Grecian-style hydrotherapy building. The “hydro,” as it was called, took the place of the old college building, which Robertson sold to John McGlinchey. A columned cement structure, 135 by 250 feet, the hydro was built around an inner courtyard. Besides the water therapy rooms, the interior included doctors’ offices, business offices, reception rooms, a billiard room, and a library as well as 75 rooms for patients. An annex attached to the south contained the dining room and kitchen and rooms for the attendants and other employees. The annex burned in 1909 but was quickly rebuilt.

The hydro was for patients who required only general nursing and were “capable of properly conducting themselves,” people who had dyspepsia, nervous exhaustion, alcoholism, or addiction to drugs such as morphine. On the west side of L Street in the Mendenhall mansion and in various cottages, the more severely mentally ill and the nursing staff were housed. In 1896 prices for care varied from $75 to $200 per month. Sometimes early film stars stayed here incognito—the privacy of all patients was protected.

Robertson believed that peaceful surroundings could help the healing process, so he had his 160 acres beautifully landscaped. The hydro’s site at South L Street and College Avenue, called by some the Green Comer, still has a landscaped lawn with many century-old palms and deodar cedars. By 1920 die grounds contained more than 17 buildings, including a gymnasium with a swimming pool, and the sanitarium employed about 300 people.

Granddaughter Lin Robertson Tobin remembered that the complex was almost completely self-sufficient, its own little city. The sanitarium “employed gardeners, cleaning personnel, painters, carpenters, electricians, floor waxers, laundry workers, food and kitchen help.... There were occupational and physical therapists, nurses and attendants, and a staff of at least six or seven psychiatrists.”

“Our own wells provided all the water needed,” Tobin recalled. “A steam plant generated heat for the buildings, and a laundry complex washed, ironed and mended the myriads of sheets, tablecloths, uniforms, etc. There was even a greenhouse to provide annuals and perennials for landscaping the year-round. Dairy cattle, pigs and chickens were raised on the premises; and, in northern California, a Hereford cattle ranch provided beef for the Sanitarium. During World War II much of our work force joined the service or went to work in factories, but I don’t think the patients were deprived.”

In 1894 Dr. Robertson’s theories were new in the treatment of mental health: “As the first step of a cure as well as for the protection of the public, they should be separated from their families, but kinder methods of treatment should prevail. They should be secluded in some quiet resort where pleasant associations with those at least no worse disordered should be secured. They should, above all, be isolated and carefully guarded against any appearance of restraint or any suggestion that they, in any way, differ from other people or are other than sick.” After 17 years at die sanitarium, Dr. Robertson retired in 1912-and lived in San Francisco. He died in 1941, at age 84; hit wife, Mary, had died in 1929. She enjoyed entertaining die “literary and artistic colony that congregated in San Francisco at the time.”

Dr. John W. Robertson Jr. continued his father’s work with the mentally ill when he returned to Livermore in 1926 after completing medical school and a period of psychiatric study in Vienna. In 1931 he built the house on South L Street in which his daughter and son- in-law live today. A major heart attack in l954 forced him to retire. He moved to Carmel but came back in the summers to fill in for doctors on vacation. Lin and Don Tobin moved back to Livermore in 1958. Don took over the business management of the sanitarium.

The advent of new tranquilizing drugs, the opening of community-oriented treatment centers for outpatient care, and the establishment of psychiatric wards in general hospitals all contributed to the demise of this private hospital in 1964. The hydro building was razed in 1965. The rest of the complex to the west was tom down to make way for the Forest Glade development.

Robertson Park, Livermore’s rodeo and sports complex, is named for Dr. John W. Robertson Sr., founder of the sanitarium.