Open Air School
Rhiwbina Open Air School, Wales 1937.
Children with tuberculosis sleep outside at Springfield House Open Air School in London in 1932.
Mary Crane Nursery, Chicago, F.P. Burke. Library of Congress. Public Domain.
Open Air Schools were designed to reduce risk of TB infection and enable children to recover from the disease. The creation and design of Open Air Schools paralleled that of tuberculosis sanatoriums. Following the founding of Waldschule für Kränkliche in the Grunewald forest, Charlottenburg in 1904, Open Air Schools were built in Bostall Wood, London in 1907 and on an abandoned Ferry in New York in 1908. By 1937 there were 96 open air day schools in operation throughout Britain, and 53 that were also residential.