{"id":824,"date":"2010-06-11T07:19:27","date_gmt":"2010-06-11T11:19:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kirkbridebuildings.com\/blog\/?p=824"},"modified":"2010-06-11T09:02:42","modified_gmt":"2010-06-11T13:02:42","slug":"brattleboro-retreat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kirkbridebuildings.com\/blog\/brattleboro-retreat","title":{"rendered":"Brattleboro Retreat"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.kirkbridebuildings.com\/blog\/images\/2010\/06\/11\/1.jpg\" alt=\"Brattleboro Retreat Main Building\" width=\"484\" height=\"270\" \/><br \/>\nI recently came into possession of a small booklet about the Brattleboro Retreat which was published in 1931. The booklet contains the hospital&#8217;s history and lots of photographs, but what I found most interesting was the drawing above. That is, of course, the Retreat&#8217;s main building which I would call a Kirkbride (albeit a small and unimpressive one). But notice that the drawing is dated 1844 \u2014 a few years before the widely accepted &#8220;first Kirkbride building&#8221; was designed and built in Trenton, New Jersey!<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Five years earlier in 1839 the building looked like this:<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.kirkbridebuildings.com\/blog\/images\/2010\/06\/11\/2.jpg\" alt=\"Brattleboro Retreat Main Building\" width=\"484\" height=\"240\" \/><\/p>\n<p>So it existed at least several years before Trenton&#8217;s Kirkbride was designed and built in the late 1840s, and had set-back wing extensions added by 1844. Sadly, I don&#8217;t yet have answers to the obvious questions (ie &#8220;Is it really a Kirkbride?&#8221; and &#8220;If so, is Brattleboro then the first Kirkbride?&#8221;). I&#8217;ll have to do \u00a0more research about how it was planned and what influenced the addition and orientation of those newer wing sections before I can answer those questions.<\/p>\n<p>However, my initial thoughts are that Brattleboro&#8217;s main building developed independently (or mostly independently) of Dr. Kirkbride&#8217;s ideas and isn&#8217;t a &#8220;true&#8221; Kirkbride. I&#8217;m certain Dr. Kirkbride&#8217;s theories didn&#8217;t spring fully-formed from his head in 1846-47 when Trenton&#8217;s plan was designed. At that time, they and other ideas that influenced Kirkbride were probably floating around in the asylum medicine community&#8217;s air so to speak. There are other possibilities though. It may be that Kirkbride visited Brattleboro (he was known to have toured asylums in New York and Massachusetts in the early 1840&#8217;s) and influenced or was influenced by these wing additions. It&#8217;s also possible that the newer &#8220;wing sections&#8221; in the 1844 picture aren&#8217;t really connected to the building at all and only appear so because of the angle and the trees blocking the view. Or it could be that the dates on the pictures are just flat out wrong.<\/p>\n<p>Here are some later pictures of the Kirkbride from the booklet, including an actual photograph.<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.kirkbridebuildings.com\/blog\/images\/2010\/06\/11\/3.jpg\" alt=\"Brattleboro Retreat Main Building\" width=\"484\" height=\"505\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I recently came into possession of a small booklet about the Brattleboro Retreat which was published in 1931. The booklet contains the hospital&#8217;s history and lots of photographs, but what I found most interesting was the drawing above. That is, of course, the Retreat&#8217;s main building which I would call a Kirkbride (albeit a small [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,13],"tags":[252,280],"class_list":["post-824","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","category-pictures","tag-brattleboro-retreat","tag-pictures"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kirkbridebuildings.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/824","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kirkbridebuildings.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kirkbridebuildings.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kirkbridebuildings.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kirkbridebuildings.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=824"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.kirkbridebuildings.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/824\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":835,"href":"https:\/\/www.kirkbridebuildings.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/824\/revisions\/835"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kirkbridebuildings.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=824"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kirkbridebuildings.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=824"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kirkbridebuildings.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=824"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}