Kirkbride Buildings Blog

Archive for July, 2009

Danville State Hospital Site

Monday, July 27th, 2009

Danville State Hospital Web Site
Phil Thomas, the gentleman who brought us City on the Hill, has created a new site dedicated to another Pennsylvania asylum: Danville State Hospital. The site includes a history of the hospital, some pointers on how to get patient information and, best of all, lots of pictures—both historical and contemporary. Though the latter are great, my favorites are the old photos of the Kirkbride. I don’t think I knew that the original admin section was considerably different than it is today. It’s probably just me, but doesn’t the old admin make the building look more like an old fashioned grand hotel than an asylum?

Greystone on House, Season 6

Thursday, July 16th, 2009

House fan (and occasional KB.com blog reader) Deborah was kind enough to notify us that the above promo for House’s upcoming sixth season is now available on YouTube. The promo has plenty of Greystone Kirkbride shots and a healthy serving of interior views too — something I hope will be a regular feature of Season 6. Stay tuned…

Virtual Tour of Athens State Hospital

Wednesday, July 8th, 2009


You can now download a computer-generated version of The Ridges containing a virtual model of the Athens State Hospital Kirkbride. The computer model was developed and produced by Kellye Green, an Interactive Multimedia major at Ohio University. A short video about the project and download links are available at the Soul of Athens web site.

The graphics aren’t quite exact in every detail, but all of The Ridges’ buildings and their configurations are reproduced in this digital world, along with historical information about each structure. My only disappointment was that you can’t get inside the Kirkbride and look around, but I’m sure it would probably have added another few years to the project to have that level of complexity. You can however get up on the roof if you “walk” into the building’s exterior wall and just keep going forward. That’s kind of neat.

Books on Amazon

The Art of Asylum Keeping The Eclipse of the State Mental Hospital The Mad Among Us America's Care of the Mentally Ill Angels in the Architecture The Architecture of Madness Asylum: Inside the Closed World of State Mental Hospitals The Eye of Danvers: A History of Danvers State Hospital
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