Kirkbride Buildings - Historic Insane Asylum Architecture

In honor of the 203rd anniversary of Thomas Story Kirkbride’s birthday, I think everybody should take a look at Duffy’s Kirkbrides HD video project. There are lots of good Kirkbride building photographs online these days, but good videos are a bit more rare. That’s why it’s especially nice to see Duffy’s tasteful video project available on Vimeo. The project is the result of countless road trips and flights taken over the course of three years, plus many many hours lovingly sorting through and editing over 600 gigabytes of video. Watching this beautiful footage really makes me wish I had considered video over still images when I first started visiting Kirkbrides.

Still photography is great and there’s really no substitute for it, but video takes things to a different level. It’s great for showing movement through a Kirkbride’s space, and how light plays across a building’s facade as the day passes. Check out the Hudson River video at 0:40 for a fantastic example of the latter. It’s also breathtaking when Duffy leaves the camera trained on a Kirkbride and speeds up time so you can watch clouds passing over the majestic building. Take a look at the Buffalo video at 0:23, and the Weston video at 0:23 to see it for yourself.

Kirkbrides HD is one of the most comprehensive video series of its type, and is a great addition to the documentary preservation of these historic buildings. Take a look when you’ve got forty-five minutes or so to spare. I’m sure you won’t be disappointed: Kirkbrides HD.

A flash mob is being planned for 11am this Saturday, July 14th at the Fergus Falls Kirkbride. Hug the Kirkbride will involve a human chain linking arms around the entire building. A video of the event will be distributed online with the hopes of garnering national attention for the threatened Kirkbride.

If you live within reasonable driving distance of Fergus Falls — or if you can afford to spend the time and money to make a longer trip — please attend and participate! They’re going to need A LOT of people to completely surround such a huge structure.

After the flash mob event, “mini tours” of the building will be given between noon and 4:00PM. For more information, check out the Facebook event page: Hug the Kirkbride. And don’t forget to join the Friends of the Kirkbride Facebook group if you haven’t already.