November 14th, 2008
The Lost Kirkbrides: Agnews State Hospital
Sorry for the lack of posts lately. I’ve been busy and haven’t heard anything noteworthy about Kirkbride buildings or related topics in a while. But just to keep things going, here’s another installment in The Lost Kirkbrides series: Agnews State Hospital, a Kirkbride building I found out about only recently…
Agnews State Hospital in Santa Clara, California opened in 1889 as The Great Asylum for the Insane. Its Kirkbride building stood for just seventeen years until the great earthquake of 1906 caused irreparable damage to the structure and the death of 117 people. The dead were buried in mass graves on the hospital grounds. The Kirkbride had to be torn down. It was replaced in 1911 by a new arrangement of buildings based on the Cottage Plan.
There are some images of the Kirkbride available online, including several that show the damage from the earthquake:
After the Quake
1) General View from the Southwest
2) South End Male Ward Building
3) Earthquake Damage at Agnews Asylum
4) Agnews State Hospital
5) Agnews State Hospital
6) Agnews Insane Asylum
7) North Side of Female Wards
The old cottage plan campus was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1997, but vacated by the hospital the following year. Sun Microsystems purchased the site and restored four of the historic buildings. It’s now their corporate headquarters, but some parts are open to the public.
Your links to the Agnews pictures of the quake damage and stuff, Doesn’t work.
Looks like the subdomain for the first link has either been discontinued or temporarily shut down.
The rest of the links work fine.