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General hospital/Satter building comes down

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A good chunk of the former general hospital/Satter building is expected to come down this month. Demolition of the 116-year-old brick building started Tuesday. (Photos by Correne Martin)

By Correne Martin

The former general hospital and O.E. Satter County Building, along Dunn Street, started coming down Tuesday. 

Late in 2018, from a sheriff’s sale, Mark Thornburg purchased this property adjacent to the home that’s been in his family’s name since 1967. The asbestos was removed from the old hospital this summer and now the structure is being razed. 

Thornburg said he is not looking to sell or develop the land into anything other than a suitable site for his son and wife to build a new home upon. 

He estimates the 1903 building has over 600 bricks and said, underneath the roof, there are Douglas fir 8x8 beams. He’s been told the big dolomite limestone rock it sat on was moved there in 1880 from a Bridgeport quarry. Thornburg is hoping to salvage as many of the pieces of worth as possible and either repurpose them on the property or sell them. 

According to local history, the land where the building sits was bought by John Lawler in the late 1860s and served as his estate, where he planted hundreds of evergreens, many of which still stand. In 1902, the family estate was sold. In 1903, the Prairie du Chien Sanitarium was erected. In the early 1930s, O.E. Satter came as a young doctor to work for the Sanitarium. Sometime later, it became a general hospital with Satter as its director. In 1976, he sold the building to Crawford County, which used it for offices until 2005.

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