Kirkbride Buildings - Historic Insane Asylums Forum

Does anyone know if the towers are Buffalo served any purpose? I've been looking a lot at Buffalo due to the massive recent report on its condition and stabilization recommendations and it got me thinking. The windows are very tall so I'd suspect there are two fairly large rooms there. Greystone seems to have a similar large room under the central admin. tower.

From what I've heard and read, the towers didn't serve any specific purpose except for aesthetics. I believe they're basically "hollow".

In NYC, many of the buildings here have similar towers. They contain the large, cylindrical water towers that are otherwise exposed on a number of buildings. I don't know if the towers at Buffalo State Hospital contain water towers, but it would be consistent.

I don't think they have water towers. I think they are hollow from what I've seen. What other buildings in NYC have similar towers.

Hi, WSH:

A great number of the Gilded Age's luxury buildings surrounding Central Park (and elsewhere in Manhattan) have these towers. They were the original "Skyscrapers," attributed to architect Emery Roth in the 1920's to conceal the otherwise "ugly" water tanks that dotted the NYC skyline (the tanks' lack of aesthetic value is now subject to debate as a sentimental fondness for them has grown). The term "skyscraper," thereafter used to characterize extremely tall buildings like the Chrysler and Empire State Building (and their modern equivalents), actually referred to the tank concealing towers on these buildings. Emery Roth was not the first to conceal the water tanks in rooftop structures, but he is considered the first to create enclosures whose utility was disguised by an ornate quality that transformed them into monuments in their own right.

In the modern engineering of large buildings, water is generally pumped from a single artery to a gravity tank (or "pressure tank") on the roof of the building. The tank then feeds the capillaries of water pipes that flow through the building. It is a better system than having the original pressurized source feed the multitude of pipes and fixtures. The large wooden water tanks that became NYC's skyline during the 1800s were decidedly unattractive by the standards of New York's upper class, thus sparking the movement to conceal them in architectural rooftop structures.

While I was unsure whether these towers concealed water tanks -- as I have never visited -- the size of the building suggested that gravity tanks would be in use. That is why I surmised their purpose.

Please google Emery Roth and you will learn more about his towers and the many buildings in NYC that have them as part of their architecture.

Here's an interesting article I just found:

http://www.cooperator.com/articles/1328/1/Celebrity-Appeal/Page1.html

That's a cool article, you'd think an article like that would have a photo!

Thanks for the info, Archangelo. While putting water tanks in a dome or other structure about the central admin of a Kirkbride was something Dr Kirkbride himself endorsed (see the second paragraph of Chapter 15 of his book about asylum design), and was something done at several (but definitely not all) Kirkbrides, I was always told that the towers at Buffalo are currently "hollow" and were always there for purely cosmetic reasons. There was never anything in them.

Still, it makes sense that there would be and I can't say that my sources are infallible. So maybe there was a water tank or tanks up there at some point.