Ardoin’s Sanitarium in Ville Platte had been “one of the most amazing hospitals of its kind” before it was leveled by fire on March 2, 1937. The fire was discovered about 2:30 a.m. and “within an hour after the alarm was sounded, Ardoin’s Sanitarium, with its seventy-five patient capacity … was no more.”
Sixteen or seventeen patients were in the hospital when the fire began. “All ...