Kirkbride Buildings - Historic Insane Asylum Architecture

As a result of the site’s 15 minutes of fame a couple weeks ago, I got a few emails about Oregon State Hospital. Each made a case for including the Oregon State Hospital “J Building” (soon to be “The Kirkbride U“) in my list of Kirkbrides. They were pretty convincing I have to say. Apparently the building was originally designed according to Kirkbride’s specifications, but when it came time to add on additional wards, real estate issues prevented the wings from being extended in the normal fashion. Instead, they were extended back at a right angle to the original building’s main axis.

After hearing the evidence from multiple sources, I’ve decided to finally consider the building a Kirkbride. I’m a little worried that adding it to the list will open the door to other variants and ugly cousins of the Kirkbride plan, but we’ll see. (Just to be clear, I don’t mean to say that OSH is ugly:) I also got a bunch of messages about other possible Kirkbride buildings not included in the list. Some people were obviously just mistaken, but a couple submitted promising candidates. I’ll keep you posted if anything interesting turns up.

What reminded me about Oregon State Hospital in particular was a couple items I recently stumbled across on the web. One of these is Oregon State Hospital during the 1960s by C.L. Brown, a former patient. The complete piece contains her memories of the hospital and a couple interviews she did with her former psychiatrist. It’s a pretty interesting read.

In addition to that, there’s also the fascinating and more unusual story of the “Library of Dust”. From the 1880s to the 1970s, the unclaimed, cremated remains of patients who died at Oregon State Hospital were placed in individual copper canisters and then stored in the basement. Over the decades, chemical reactions caused by moisture resulted in brilliant colors streaking across the canisters and “blooms” of corrosion erupting from their sides. It’s kind of nice to know that even though the cannisters were originally almost identical, each one has become an individual because of its unique reaction to the elements. Photographer David Maisel has documented this collection of “cremains” in a collection of photographs titled “Library of Dust”. You can see some of the photos and learn a bit more about the remains on Maisel’s web site, or you can purchase his book which will be released this month: Library of Dust.

So yesterday KirkbrideBuildings.com got a link in an Associated Press article which was picked up by all kinds of news sites including The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Fox News. Needless to say, this resulted in HUGE traffic, even bigger than the last traffic spike in May. While I’m ecstatic about the exposure, my rickety old hosting service couldn’t take the heat and clocked out at about 11PM EST when my monthly bandwidth quota was exceeded. (more…)

I got an email last week informing me that my list of Kirkbrides was incomplete because the asylum in Osawatomie, Kansas wasn’t included. While I’m still not 100% sure there was a Kirkbride there, I trust this person’s opinion and went looking (again) for whatever evidence I could find.

During my search I did find something promising related to the Osawatomie asylum, but the thing I found really exciting was something else entirely that I stumbled upon by happy accident. I’m sure only the most geeky of asylum architecture enthusiasts will find this interesting, so if you’re not one of those, please disregard this post. If you are an asylum architecture nerd, then read on… (more…)

Source: Google Maps

I’ve been waiting for more Kirkbrides to show up in Google Maps‘ Street View feature since the Worcester Kirkbride appeared a few months ago. While putting together a separate post involving Buffalo State Hospital, I happily discovered that the Buffalo Kirkbride is now featured. If you’ve never been, take a look around.

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…)

It’s amazing: the same wonderful technology that allows me to basically publish a book internationally for pennies a day also allows me to accidentally delete seven years of work in ten seconds flat. Last night I accidentally deleted several hundred files from this web site and spent a few frantic hours re-uploading as much as I could. Luckily I’m pretty good about doing back ups so I didn’t lose anything except for one new page I was working on. I’ve got most everything back online now, but thanks to a DSL line that’s been going down regularly for the past week or so* (and which I will throttle to death as soon as this post is published), there are a few pictures and some small custom touches missing from the blog. I’ll have those back soon, but hopefully no one will even notice.

If you do see anything wrong with the site though, please let me know. I’d very much appreciate it.

* Tip to DSL users: if you move into an old house and need a technician to check your phone lines more than twice because you’re DSL keeps going down, do yourself a favor and get cable internet access ASAP.

I have a confession to make: I still haven’t read all of Thomas Kirkbride’s book On the Construction and General Arrangement of Hospitals for the Insane. I know, it’s shameful but true. I have read a decent portion of it, but the text is just so utterly BORING. Kirkbride’s convoluted and archaic prose full of inverted sentence structures, superfluous commas, and needless repetition is bad enough, but the bulk of the content is pretty tiresome too. The lengthy discussions about fireproofing and number of “water-closets” required per ward really put me to sleep.

I somehow managed to slog through another ten chapters (51 through 60) and transcribe them for the site though. I know I said I wasn’t going to add to the transcription now that the book is available elsewhere, but I’ve changed my mind. There’s no other way I’m ever going to read the entire book, and having it available here as a resource just makes sense. (more…)

Sorry for the blatant self-promotion, but I think some of you regular readers will be interested in this. I’ve started another web site along similar lines to this one, although it doesn’t have anything to do with asylums. It’s a collection of photos and history of buildings in the northeastern United States.

www.nearchitecture.com

In studying Kirkbrides for so long, I’ve also gained appreciation for other buildings too. Even though they don’t have the same allure as the old insane asylums, other buildings can still be beautiful and intriguing. While traveling to visit Kirkbrides, I’ve come across a few other places worth taking pictures of. I wasn’t planning this new site when I took the photos though so the galleries are currently a bit uneven. But at least it’s a better starting off point than the original KirkbrideBuildings.com! (I still can’t believe I put that online. You’ve come a long way, baby…) (more…)

I’ve added a page for Cherokee State Hospital. The photos date from the same trip in 2004 when I visited Clarinda and Independence. Like the other two Kirkbrides, the building at Cherokee is in great shape and the grounds are well kept, giving a good sense of what Kirkbride hospitals must have looked like back in the early days. Cherokee was a little different though in that much more of the Kirkbride is still fully used, not to mention the fact that one wing is now occupied by a prison. A tall fence topped with razor wire surrounds the prison wing, and really detracts from the building’s otherwise pleasant appearance. (more…)

Stepping back from the subject of Kirkbrides a little, I just wanted to announce that KirkbrideBuildings.com passed a pretty significant milestone today. As of this morning, the site had 10,276 unique visitors this month. That may be chicken feed to popular sites getting ten times that many visitors a day, but considering KB.com’s average for the past few years has been around 5000 uniques a month, it’s pretty amazing.

In March the site crossed over the 7000 unique visitors mark for the first time, and then for a second time in April. But May has seen an even bigger increase and the site will likely get over 12,000 uniques by the end of the month. (more…)