{"nrhp_refnum":"90000818","name":"Clifton Springs Sanitarium Historic District","other_names":["See Also:Clifton Springs Sanitarium","Foster Cottage"],"category":"district","location":{"address":"E. Main St. between Crane and Prospect","address_restricted":false,"city":"Clifton Springs","county":"Ontario County","state":"NY","lat":42.96120114400003,"lon":-77.13668615499995,"geom_source":"nps_gis"},"listed_date":"1990-05-24","is_nhl":false,"nhl_designated_date":null,"areas_of_significance":["Health/Medicine","Architecture"],"significance_levels":["local"],"summary":{"what_it_is":"A historic district on East Main Street in Clifton Springs, Ontario County, New York, made up of the remnants of the Clifton Springs Sanitarium complex, built between 1854 and 1927, with six contributing buildings and one contributing site.","why_significant":"The district preserves the buildings and landscaped grounds of a medical institution founded by Dr. Henry Foster in 1849 that dominated the village for decades. Its program combined spiritual, allopathic, homeopathic and water-cure approaches. The buildings also show Gothic Revival, Romanesque and Classical Revival design, and the 1896 chapel holds a Tiffany glass mosaic.","narrative":"This cluster of buildings and grounds on East Main Street in Clifton Springs preserves what remains of the Clifton Springs Sanitarium, a medical institution that shaped the village from the mid-nineteenth century into the early twentieth. Dr. Henry Foster founded it as a water cure in 1849. The district includes the Foster Cottage (1854), the Foster Block (1865), the YMCA (1879), the five-story brick sanitarium of 1896, Maxwell Hall (1926) and the Woodbury Building (1927), plus part of the original landscaped grounds. The sanitarium's chapel holds a Tiffany favrile glass mosaic of the Last Supper. The institution blended religious, allopathic, homeopathic and water-cure practices, which the nomination describes as unusual. Some features were lost, including two open-air pavilions, and the main building was altered in 1974. The complex nevertheless keeps nearly all its original buildings in their historic relationships. Its institutional descendant, the Clifton Springs Hospital and Clinic, continues on the site.","period_of_significance":null,"architect_builder":"Woodbury Building designed by Ellerbe & Co. of St. Paul, Minn., and built by John W. Cowper Co. of Buffalo; the Tiffany reredos was designed by Frederick Wilson","architectural_style":"Gothic Revival, Romanesque, Classical Revival","criteria":[],"status_note":"The main 1896 sanitarium building now houses senior citizen apartments. The Woodbury Building remains in hospital use, and the Clifton Springs Hospital and Clinic occupies much of the former grounds.","vacant_flag":false,"machine_generated":true,"model":"claude-sonnet-5-5","prompt_version":"v1.0-2026-10-29","generated_at":"2026-10-29 02:50:44.829778-05","source_pdf":"https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/lz/electronic-records/rg-079/NPS_NY/90000818.pdf"},"photo":{"url_800":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/90000818/a5893b7ec2-800.webp","url_1600":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/90000818/a5893b7ec2-1600.webp","licence":"CC BY-SA 2.0","author":"Doug Kerr from Albany, NY, United States","credit_html":"<a href=\"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:YMCA_Clifton_Springs_Sanitarium_Historic_District_May_10.jpg\" rel=\"noopener\">Doug Kerr from Albany, NY, United States</a>, <a href=\"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0\" rel=\"license noopener\">CC BY-SA 2.0</a>, via Wikimedia Commons","source_page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:YMCA_Clifton_Springs_Sanitarium_Historic_District_May_10.jpg"},"district":null,"sources":{"nps_snapshot_date":"2026-05-22","nara_catalog":"https://catalog.archives.gov/id/75320499","wikipedia":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clifton_Springs_Sanitarium_Historic_District","wikidata":"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5133318"},"indexable":true,"url":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/new-york/ontario-county/clifton-springs-sanitarium-historic-district-90000818/"}