Kirkbride Buildings - Historic Insane Asylum Architecture

Chris Payne’s upcoming book Asylum: Inside the Closed World of State Mental Hospitals is available for pre-purchase on Amazon. In case you don’t know, Chris Payne has been taking fantastic photographs of state hospitals for many years now. Although we’ve never met in person, our paths have crossed a few times as we both travelled around the country visiting many of the same psychiatric hospitals. Mr. Payne, however, has visited more hospitals and taken more photos than I have—better quality photos too. I haven’t seen a copy yet, but I’m certain this book will be worth purchasing if you have any interest in asylums and asylum architecture. I’ll write more about it after I get a copy to look through. That will probably be some time in early October.

There’s a new book out by photographer Katherine Anderson featuring photographs of several former New England asylums, including the Kirkbide buildings in Danvers, Worcester, and Northampton, Massachusetts. In addition to the pictures, the book also contains an extensive history of mental illness and asylums as well as “feeble-mindedness” and the state school system. The book is called Behind the Walls - Shadows of New England’s Asylums and you can preview (and purchase) it here: Behind the Walls.

Last week I picked up a copy of Dr. Enoch Callaway’s Asylum: A Mid-Century Madhouse and Its Lessons about Our Mentally Ill Today. In case you’re not aware: Dr. Callaway was a psychiatrist at Worcester State Hospital in the late 1940s and Asylum is a memoir of his time there. I have to say it’s a great read. Each memory is told with intelligence and wit in one short chapter which you can usually breeze through in about two or three minutes. In spite of their brevity, these concise vignettes provide remarkably insightful illustrations of the hidden world of Worcester State Hospital in the mid-twentieth century.

If you’re looking for pictures, Asylum doesn’t have a whole lot unfortunately. The ones it does have are pretty common (except for one medical staff group shot on the hospital lawn). There isn’t much in the way of in-depth descriptions of the Kirkbride either. Dr. Callaway focuses much more on events and people than on architecture. But the Kirkbride building is where most of the story takes place and it gets plenty of references. You can tell Dr. Callaway has a lot of affection for the old building and a sadness over it’s demise—as well as the hospital’s general decline. (more…)

While doing a little digging around on Archive.org this evening I found a few Kirkbride- and asylum-related documents. First are two books about the Kirkbride family: A Brief History of the Kirkbride Family and Domestic Portraiture of Our Ancestors: Kirkbride. While they don’t tell us much about the good Doctor, both contain some interesting information about the Kirkbride family’s history.

There’s also a copy of On the Construction, Organization, and General Arrangements of Hospitals for the Insane available at Archive.org. If you use the ‘Flip Book’ feature, it’s much easier to read than with the clunky interface at Google Books. (more…)

As a result of the site’s 15 minutes of fame a couple weeks ago, I got a few emails about Oregon State Hospital. Each made a case for including the Oregon State Hospital “J Building” (soon to be “The Kirkbride U“) in my list of Kirkbrides. They were pretty convincing I have to say. Apparently the building was originally designed according to Kirkbride’s specifications, but when it came time to add on additional wards, real estate issues prevented the wings from being extended in the normal fashion. Instead, they were extended back at a right angle to the original building’s main axis.

After hearing the evidence from multiple sources, I’ve decided to finally consider the building a Kirkbride. I’m a little worried that adding it to the list will open the door to other variants and ugly cousins of the Kirkbride plan, but we’ll see. (Just to be clear, I don’t mean to say that OSH is ugly:) I also got a bunch of messages about other possible Kirkbride buildings not included in the list. Some people were obviously just mistaken, but a couple submitted promising candidates. I’ll keep you posted if anything interesting turns up. (more…)

I got an email this morning breaking the sad news that Heidi Johnson passed away this week. In case you’re unaware, Ms. Johnson was a photographer and author of Angels in the Architecture, a fantastic collection of photos and history of Traverse City State Hospital. I never met or spoke with her unfortunately, but her work documenting TCSH was an influence on me and on many other asylum photographers. I’ve always had nothing but respect for her work. In addition to being just plain beautiful, I’m sure it also played a role in the preservation of Building 50.

For some other tributes and thoughts on Ms. Johnson’s passing, please see Heidi Johnson and the Angels in the Architecture and Remembering Heidi Johnson.

As explained a while back in this post, it’s my goal to post pages with pictures and history of each demolished Kirkbride building that I never got a chance to visit. I’ve recently posted a few more, including Spring Grove State Hospital (Maryland), Fulton State Hospital (Missouri), Jacksonville State Hospital (Illinois), Kalamazoo State Hospital (Michigan), Winnebago State Hospital (you guessed it: Wisconsin), and Pontiac State Hospital (Michigan).

Some of the less boring facts gleaned during my research involve the asylums in Jacksonville and Fulton. At Jacksonville, in 1860 a lady named Elizabeth Packard was involuntarily committed for three years. Her husband sent her to the asylum after she began disagreeing with his religious beliefs. On her release, she separated from her husband, formed the Anti-Insane Asylum Society, and successfully petitioned the Illinois legislature to grant wives the right to a public hearing if their husbands tried to have them committed. She also wrote a few books about her asylum experience (one of which can be read online here). (more…)

I have a confession to make: I still haven’t read all of Thomas Kirkbride’s book On the Construction and General Arrangement of Hospitals for the Insane. I know, it’s shameful but true. I have read a decent portion of it, but the text is just so utterly BORING. Kirkbride’s convoluted and archaic prose full of inverted sentence structures, superfluous commas, and needless repetition is bad enough, but the bulk of the content is pretty tiresome too. The lengthy discussions about fireproofing and number of “water-closets” required per ward really put me to sleep.

I somehow managed to slog through another ten chapters (51 through 60) and transcribe them for the site though. I know I said I wasn’t going to add to the transcription now that the book is available elsewhere, but I’ve changed my mind. There’s no other way I’m ever going to read the entire book, and having it available here as a resource just makes sense. (more…)

There’s a new pictorial history of Spring Grove State Hospital entitled… Spring Grove State Hospital. It’s was compiled by David Helsel, M.D. and Trevor Blank. (Dr. Helsel is the superintendent of Spring Grove Hospital Center.)

The book was published as part of the Images of America series. Images of America books are pretty consistently good quality resources for historical images and history.

I haven’t seen the book myself yet, but I’m told that several images of the Spring Grove Kirkbride building are included. If the images are anything like those on the hospital web site’s virtual tour of the old Kirkbride, I’m sure they’re worth seeing, especially in print.

I’ve been trying to add to the list of Kirkbride buildings and remembered a couple asylums mentioned in America’s Care of the Mentally Ill. In the book, there’s a nice bird’s eye view of an asylum called Saint Vincent’s in Saint Louis, Missouri. After a little searching I was able to find the address and confirm that it was a Kirkbride. In the aerial photo above, you can see the building still stands. It’s been converted to a residential complex called Castle Park Apartments and will probably be around for a good long time. That was a nice surprise. It’s hard to believe there aren’t any other photos of this castle-like Kirkbride online. It’s pretty impressive, if a little over the top in style. (more…)