I'm Kelly McEvers, and this is Atlas Obscura, a celebration of the world's strange,

incredible, and wondrous places.

In the middle of Staten Island, just across the water from the Manhattan skyline, there is this

hospital.

It's mostly abandoned.

There haven't been patients there since the 1960s.

The windows are broken, vines cover the walls.

You can hardly see the place behind big old trees.

But underneath, the buildings are beautiful.

Some are Spanish mission style with red terracotta roofs, gabled attic dormers, pavilions,

where patients could step outside and get fresh air.

This is Sea View Hospital.

Today, it's falling apart, but for decades, the hospital was staffed nearly entirely by

black nurses from the Jim Crow South,

which was not a common thing at the time.

Tuberculosis was the major cause of death in New York City then, and these nurses were

some of the only people who were willing to treat patients who had the disease.

And it was here in this forgotten place, staffed by people

who were shunned and segregated, where they eventually found a cure. Maria Smilios told this story in her

book, The Black Angels, the untold story of the nurses who helped cure tuberculosis.

Hi, Maria. Hi. How are you? So glad to have you here. First off,

how bad was tuberculosis in New York and beyond at that time? So tuberculosis was one of the most

...