On Tuesday there was a public meeting concerning efforts to preserve the Buffalo State Hospital Kirkbride. At the meeting, the Richardson Center Corporation revealed their Historic Structures Report (available for download on their documents page). The report is a beautifully comprehensive collection of history and images of the hospital buildings, and you should definitely check it out.
I haven’t digested the whole report yet, but the part I find most interesting so far is the description of the hospital’s construction, development and eventual downsizing which begins on page 62. Included are maps of the hospital campus during different time periods, as well as photos of the buildings from over the years. Especially striking is an old photo from about 1880 of the unfinished Kirkbride (page 70). (more…)
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 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.
In case you haven’t noticed, I’ve been adding pages for Kirkbride buildings that no longer exist. If you go to the main buildings page and scroll down to the demolished Kirkbride list, you’ll see that some locations are now linked to pages for a particular asylum. So far I’ve added content for Columbus State Hospital (OH), Elgin State Hospital (IL), Mount Pleasant State Hospital (IA), Jackson State Hospital (MS), Nevada State Hospital (MO), and Rochester State Hospital (MN). I also put up a page for Saint Joseph State Hospital (MO) since what’s left of the building is now part of an active prison and I’m not likely to get photos of the place. (more…)
I’ve added an Independence State Hospital page where you can see my photos of the Kirkbride and learn a little about its history. The photos are from a visit to Iowa I took back in 2004. As I mentioned in the Clarinda post, the quality of the pictures leaves something to be desired. I think these are even a full step down from the Clarinda photos. (The ones from Cherokee are even worse. I don’t even want to post those, but I probably will just to be as complete as possible. Watch for them in the future…)
Independence is a nice looking Kirkbride. It’s facade isn’t as dramatic as some, but it’s still a pretty impressive sight, set back from the main road, sitting at the end of a long stretch of open lawn. Its relative simplicity in design would probably have pleased Dr. Kirkbride. (more…)
Journalist Steven Hart’s thoughtful piece on Greystone Park and the Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan friendship: Behind Grey Walls.
Included is a video clip on the same topic from the Strange New Jersey guys. Footage from inside the Kirkbride supposedly reveals the room Guthrie occupied during his stay.
Old time Kirkbride Buildings forum member WSH posted a few scans today of some annual reports from the “Worcester Lunatic Hospital“. Among other things, the superintendent writes about the installation of the clock in the admin tower. Also included are old photos of one of the rotundas, Hooper Hall. They’re definitely worth checking out.
I can’t tell how old it is, but this article on the history of Saint Elizabeths on the National Museum of Civil War Medicine site is worth a look. Some of the info is pretty familiar, but this lithograph of the rear of the Kirkbride is something I’ve never seen before—and not a bad piece of work either.
It’s funny how almost every Kirkbride building has been drawn, painted, and photographed over its entire lifecycle, and that the photography done now is just a continuation of that historical record.
There’s finally a page for Clarinda State Hospital. I visited the place back in 2004…
2004… the days when I absolutely, positively NEEDED a camera that fit in my pocket. The days before I knew what a tripod was for, or had ever heard of things like bracketing. What I’m trying to say that most of the pictures are a bit iffy. Still, there are plenty of other pictures on this site from the same time period, and these Clarinda shots are the best from my Iowa excursion. Looking at some of them though I just can’t help feeling disappointed. Why didn’t I step back a few feet here? Why didn’t I turn two degrees to the right there? How did my @#%*! finger get in front of the lens? (more…)
I added a Greystone Park page to the site. I’ve been sitting on pictures of the place for a few years now. They’ll be a bit of a yawn to those familiar with other asylum web sites (most notably John Gray’s fantastic Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital). But I think it’s important that the building be represented here, if only to stop the semi-regular emails I get telling me that I missed Greystone… (more…)
