When Department of Public Works (DPW) crews responded last week to reports of a puncture hole in the surface of Hopeworth Avenue, they found something a bit unexpected.

“It was only about 6 or 8 inches wide,” said DPW Director, Chris Parella. “But you could see way down.”

Crews cut a small square to get a sense of what they were dealing with, and the Sewer Department came by with a camera to aid the investigation.

“They could see all these openings. It just kept going,” said Parella. “The more we opened, the more we found.”

It appeared to Parella that the hole had punched through into a brick dome, surrounded by a circular wall.

For DPW, the priority was to secure the busy neighborhood street, ultimately opening an 8’ deep hole with a 20’ diameter. The brick sidewall of the caved-in dome remained intact, but otherwise, it appeared that back in the day, Hopeworth Avenue had unknowingly been built over an open space within a structure.

“I don’t know how that was missed. It could have been a very serious problem,” said Parella. Curious, he reached out to Community Development Director Diane Williamson to see if she had any ideas. She couldn’t find anything obvious in her records, but that afternoon, as she was taking a walk, she had a ‘eureka’ moment.

Much of the Hopeworth neighborhood, she remembered, was built on the grounds of an old sanitarium.

“I don’t know how I first heard of it,” Williamson recalled. “I couldn’t find anything in my local history books, and there is nothing much to see in old arial photographs. But there was a sanitarium there and the ruins of it burned around the 1950s.”

Parella did some googling and found an old marketing brochure online that actually describes an artesian well, consistent with what engineers investigating the site thought they were looking at. It was all part of a large complex that covered much of the Hopeworth neighborhood.

“Residents in the area have mentioned that they have found some interesting things when digging in their yards,” said Williamson.

According to a June 2017 Rhode Island Medical Journal article by Mary Korr, the Hopeworth Sanitarium was founded by the sons of a Civil War veteran who died at Shiloh, Herman Canfield, and his wife Martha, a nurse who ran an orphanage after the war. The Canfield brothers first came to Bristol in 1879, and within a few years had purchased a large parcel of land and buildings along the shores of Mount Hope Bay, establishing the Hopeworth Sanitarium in 1883.

Situated on 65 acres, the main building consisted of 24 bedrooms, sitting rooms, treatment areas, and dining, music and billiard rooms.

According to the brochure, it was billed as a respite for the “weary invalid” and welcomed chronic “nervous cases, other than the insane,” including patients with rheumatism, gout, diabetes, diseases of the kidney, stomach and bladder, and heart disease, with the exception of tuberculosis, infectious diseases, and epilepsy.

Rooms started at $15–$30 per week, and doctors on staff included two gynecologists, a neurologist, a surgeon and a general practitioner. Amenities included a bowling alley, exercise room, tennis courts and croquet grounds; carriages, horses and a large herd of Holstein and Jersey cows also called the sanitarium home. They even offered the use of a sloop for sailors.

The Canfields sold the facility in 1909, and in 1959, the main building of the former sanitarium was destroyed in a fire. Eventually the land was divided into home parcels, and it became the Hopeworth neighborhood as we know it today.

Late last week, crews successfully backfilled the hole and repaired the road.