Our little paper, gotten up for the benefit of the patients of the Alabama Insane Hospital and to give the patrons of the institution an insight into some details of its practical operations, is printed on quarto Novelty Press, without expense to the State—the whole labor of type-setting and putting to press being performed by the patients, or by employees of the Hospital in intervals of leisure from their regular duties…
That’s how The Meteor—a newspaper written and published by Bryce Hospital’s patients—describes itself in its inaugural issue published in 1872. The Alabama Department of Archives and History has put eleven issues of The Meteor online in PDF format (note that at the time of this writing the link for the second issue isn’t working). While not quite the juicy rag you might hope for, the paper’s articles do offer some glimpses of life at the hospital as well as into the minds of the patients.
My favorite part is from the very first issue where one patient compares Alabama’s hospital for the insane with its neighbor the state university by saying, “The inmates of the University come to acquire ideas. We to get rid of them.” (more…)
Bryce Hospital’s chances for becoming a national historic landmark are looking much better. The University of Alabama has agreed that national landmark status won’t hinder their future plans for the hospital buildings. An application for a federal historical designation will be made, and I think it’s likely that the application will be approved. As noted here a couple weeks ago, national landmark status would do much to help the Bryce Kirkbride be preserved, so this is great news.
Someone familiar with the hospital’s history pointed out to me recently that the Kirkbride at Bryce is most likely the oldest intact Kirkbride building in existence today. In addition, Dr. Kirkbride himself stated that this particular building was the most exact embodiment of his original principles of hospital design. Those two facts alone make the building worth preserving, not to mention it’s long history as a part of Alabama and the nation.
There’s a story on TuscaloosaNews.com about efforts to get Bryce Hospital designated a national historic landmark: Panel Urges Landmark Protection for Bryce. The application for landmark status has to be made within a month, but much like that fickle girlfriend or boyfriend we’ve all had at one time in our lives, the University of Alabama wants to keep its options open. So far it has opposed the landmark application. The school plans to purchase the Bryce Hospital property when the hospital moves in a year or so, and seems to believe that landmark status will somehow “hurt the university if it owned the building.” (more…)
There’s a new editorial piece about Bryce Hospital and the University of Alabama on TuscaloosaNews.com: Southern Lights: Surviving on the ‘Wrong’ Side of the Tracks. Instead of focusing on the present (see Bryce Hospital in the News), this article goes deep into the history of the two institutions. There are a good amount of insights into Dr Bryce’s character and how he managed things in the early days. You get a good sense of why this hospital bears Dr. Bryce’s name, and of the multifaceted nature of an asylum superintendent’s job. The superintendent not only provided care to the hospital’s patients but also acted as a chief executive, setting policy, marketing the hospital, and keeping the institution fiscally sound among other administrative/business type tasks.
I also found this old column from the September 1, 1895 edition of the New York Times: Model Home for Insane; Features of the Alabama-Bryce Hospital in Tuscaloosa. (Click on “View Full Article” to read the whole thing in PDF format.) It was written a year after Dr. Bryce’s death and gives a more contemporary, historical overview of life at the hospital and Dr. Bryce’s influence on it.
Bryce Hospital has been in the news a bit this March. As mentioned in a previous post, the Bryce campus is likely to be sold to the University of Alabama. If the sale comes to pass, the hospital will move to another location, and the Kirkbride building will become the school’s property. One reader pointed out to me that the university president, Robert Witt, says the historic building will be left standing.
“UA does not have a plan for developing the Bryce property if it were to become part of the university, but Witt said any buildings on the National Historical Registry would be preserved.” (Tuscaloosa News, UA Hires Consultant to Work on Bryce Project) (more…)
There’s an article in The Birmingham News about a potential sale of Bryce Hospital. The adjoining University of Alabama is negotiating for the purchase of the property. Nothing’s definite yet, least of all the fate of the Kirkbride there, but there’s some worry that the building may be lost if the sale goes through. Hopefully preservation will win out, but unfortunately the odds aren’t in its favor if what’s happened to a few other Kirkbride buildings recently is anything to go by.
