Kirkbride Buildings - Historic Insane Asylum Architecture

Just before 2009 ended, Alabama’s board of mental health approved the sale of the Bryce Hospital campus to the University of Alabama. The university will pay $60 million for the property and Bryce Hospital will move to a new location within Tuscaloosa. According to the Associated Press, UA has “indicated it will maintain the nearly 150-year-old main building, which opened in 1861. The white structure is expected to be used by the university for office space and maintained as a museum.” Read more here: Sale of Bryce Hospital to the University of Alabama Approved.

Points North, a show on Interlochen Public Radio in Michigan, recently produced a program about Traverse City State Hospital: listen here. The program is 50+ minutes and full of personal history told by hospital employees and patients of the hospital. In the beginning you even get to listen in as former employees tour the Kirkbride building and tell stories of their experiences—the mundane and unusual, the humorous and sad.

What’s particularly fascinating is the contrast between the patients’ feelings and the those of the employees. The former almost exclusively express a fondness for the hospital, while the patients interviewed express good and bad feelings about the hospital.

The end of the program is about Heidi Johnson and her connection to the hospital. It tells a sad side of her story that I personally hadn’t heard before and was surprised to learn.

A public forum to discuss the future of Clarinda MHI will be held on Monday, October 12th in the MHI auditorium. The scheduled time is 3:00 - 5:00PM. If you live in the area and are concerned with keeping the Clarinda facility open, you should attend and make your voice heard.  Here’s a flyer for the event: Attention Citizens of Clarinda (4.7 megabyte PDF). The forum is part of Iowa’s investigation into whether one of it’s four state psychiatric facilities should be closed. You can read more about that story here: Iowa to Close a Kirkbride?, and in the forum within the various Iowa hospital threads.

The transformation of  Traverse City State Hospital into The Village at Grand Traverse Commons is probably a familiar story to most of you reading this blog. Reuse of the buildings there is moving steadily forward and the project has largely been a success. It continues to amaze me that more cities haven’t yet followed this example with their own abandoned Kirkbrides. NPR recently produced a piece on the project describing how it could be a model for developing sustainable neighborhoods in Michigan—a state that’s been hit especially hard by the economic downturn. Listen here:

And lest we forget the past while we’re contemplating the future, I’d just like to remind you that a few former TCSH patients continue to share their memories of the hospital on the forum. You can read their thread here: Forgotten Children of Hall 18, Hall 7.

On Wednesday, September 16th at 10AM there will be a public hearing concerning the historic buildings at the state hospital in Columbia, South Carolina. The Palmetto Trust for Historic Preservation is asking everyone interested in preserving these structures to attend the meeting and show support. More information can be found here: Crunch Time! Join the Palmetto Trust and Have a Voice!

Here are a few recent articles describing what’s going on with these buildings (including the Kirkbride): State Nearing Sale of Old Bull Street Mental Hospital and Dual Plans in Motion to Make Use of Old Bull Street Hospital.

Anybody living in South Carolina that can attend and support preservation of these buildings, please do!

(Sorry this is such short notice. I only just found out about it.)

Aside from a video with some nice photos and footage of the Buffalo Kirkbride, there’s not much new in this article about the rehabilitation project there: Plans for the Richardson. It’s good to hear things are progressing, but I just mainly wanted to point out the video (it appears directly after the text of the article).

The Otter Tail County Historical Society in Minnesota will be hosting an event titled Myths and Legends: Stories from the Fergus Falls State Hospital. It will be held on the grounds of the abandoned facility at 5:30PM on September 4th, September 18th and October 16th. The event coincides with an exhibit at the historical society’s museum also titled Myths and Legends which deals with lore from the entire county, but includes stories and equipment from the state hospital. Attending the event will cost $5. More information is available here and here.

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.

According to the Buffalo News, renovation work on the central admin and adjacent wards of the Buffalo Kirkbride is about to get serious. If all goes well, work to preserve the stone sections of the building for future use will be in full swing this summer, and should be completed in about 15 months. The Richardson Center Corporation also plans on stabilizing the brick wards during this time, but they expect those sections may stay vacant for quite a while.

There will be a final public meeting about the project at 6PM on Tuesday, July 14 in Buffalo State College’s Rockwell Hall.

Source: Work to Start on Richardson Olmsted’s Landmark Tower

A gentleman named Benny Britton has published a book chronicling the history of Terrell State Hospital in Texas. Britton has been an employee of the hospital for forty-two years. Unfortunately, the book—which includes historic and current photos—does not appear to be available anywhere but at the hospital. If you’re in the Terrell area, there will be a book signing on Tuesday, June 9, 2009 at the state hospital Silver Star Cinema at 5:30PM where the book will be available for purchase. More information can be found in this article: Terrell State Hospital History Book Published. If I find out you can pick up the book online or in bookstores, I’ll post a follow-up.