Kirkbride Buildings - Historic Insane Asylum Architecture

John Gray is publishing a new edition of his Abandoned Asylums of New England photography book. The original version was self-published and came out a little over ten years ago. This new hardcover version is 220 pages and includes lots more high-quality photos in both black and white and color. It’s being published in connection with the Museum of disABILITY History who provides the text. From the publisher:

“Abandoned Asylums of New England offers the work of photographer John Gray, who has captured the final throes of the once majestic monuments of medical treatment. This photographic journey into the world of urban exploration documents the state of some of New England’s storied temples of control, treatment, and rehabilitation of individuals with disabling conditions. The Museum of disABILITY History provides a historical context for these asylums that heightens the degree of entropy into which these feats of architectural grandeur have fallen. From the gigantic Kirkbride campuses to the airy tuberculosis hospitals, Gray’s photography reveals through its compositions the poignant echoes of the lives lived, and sometimes lost, at these disappearing asylums.”

Abandoned Asylums of New England should eventually be available for purchase on the museum’s website, but to order a copy right now, you have to send an email to PeopleInkPress@people-inc.org. And to keep up-to-date with news about the book, like the Abandoned Asylums of New England Facebook page.

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…)

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…)

For those of you in New England: Carla Yanni, author of The Architecture of Madness: Insane Asylums in the United States, will be giving a lecture at the Lamar Soutter Library in Worcester, Massachusetts on March 12, 5:00PM-7:00PM. The lecture is open to the public. Dr. Yanni will also be signing her book, which is a really good read if you’re at all interested in asylum history.

The book is generously illustrated with old photos, drawings, and architectural plans. It also engagingly describes the familiar arc of the asylum system’s rise and fall, while revealing a few nuggets of data not readily available elsewhere. Most importantly though, the peculiar relationship between architecture and early mental healthcare is analyzed and presented here much more thoroughly than in most other books on asylum history. You really get a strong sense of why Dr. Kirkbride and his peers believed in the power of their buildings.

In connection with a broader overview of American asylums, Dr. Yanni also presents closer studies of the Kirkbride asylums at Trenton, New Jersey; Tuscaloosa, Alabama; Buffalo, New York; Poughkeepsie, New York; Morristown, New Jersey; and Saint Elizabeths in Washington, DC. There are also a couple of intriguing, first-hand accounts from nineteenth-century asylum patients. It’s definitely worth getting your hands on a copy.