Kirkbride Buildings - Historic Insane Asylums Forum

Wow, that was really nice. Not just for the history of the Utah hospital, but any of those photos could have easily been from any state hospital during the same era.

You know, I have read in quite a few places that Utah had a hospital built on the kirkbride plan, and this was the only hospital in Utah...

Now I know it was not a shallow V shape as kirkbrides usually are, however this pictures showed it it was built from the wards in to the admin, which was the way Kirkbride recommended asylum construction to be done.

So the question, does it need the V shape on both sides to be a kirkbride plan hospital when patient population means the hospital never saw the need to expand the wards? If they followed every other aspect of the plan?

I think you could call a building that was built to follow Kirkbride's principles but never got the extended wings a Kirkbride building. Sure. I'd make sure to have some pretty compelling evidence that is was built following Kirkbride's principles before calling it one though.

I've often wondered about Utah too. I don't know enough about its history to make a call on this though.

It first caught my eye in a list in "Dr. Kirkbride and His Mental Hospital" where he said all the states which had built hospitals according to the Kirkbride plan and Utah was on it.

Since there was only one asylum in Utah it must be the one.

I looked into it. I know they built the wings first, then the admin last, which Kirkbride recommended for construction.

Looking at the sanborn we can't see the actual floorplan, which would be useful, but each wing took sort of a U shape, so its not too different from Taunton in the beginning.