Kirkbride Buildings - Historic Insane Asylum Architecture

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?

Pennsylvania state representative Kathy Rapp is working to “protect the patients, jobs and community services at Warren State Hospital.” Evidently there’s an effort in the state government to privatize elements of the institution. This effort is part of a larger “deinstitutionalization scheme”, which could possibly lead to further closings of state psychiatric centers such as Warren State Hospital. I found out about this at Pennsylvania Mental Health Issues which has a few posts about Warren State Hospital listed here. (more…)