Kirkbride Buildings - Historic Insane Asylum Architecture

Looking around on Flickr this weekend I came across this photo set: Danvers State Hospital & Session 9. The pictures were taken by Russ Fischer who apparently did some work on the set of Session 9, snapping away whenever he had a spare second or two. It’s always great to find photos from before there were boards on all the windows and you could see without a flashlight or camera flash. My favorite photos from the set are this one, this one, and this one.

And by the way, if you haven’t seen Session 9 yet, I highly recommend it. It’s a thriller about an asbestos abatement crew given the job of cleaning up DSH and what happens to them as they uncover the hospital’s secrets (as well as some of their own). It may not be the best movie you’ll ever see, but it’s good and it has some amazing footage of the Danvers State Hospital Kirkbride. And October would be a great time to watch it…

While doing a little digging around on Archive.org this evening I found a few Kirkbride- and asylum-related documents. First are two books about the Kirkbride family: A Brief History of the Kirkbride Family and Domestic Portraiture of Our Ancestors: Kirkbride. While they don’t tell us much about the good Doctor, both contain some interesting information about the Kirkbride family’s history.

There’s also a copy of On the Construction, Organization, and General Arrangements of Hospitals for the Insane available at Archive.org. If you use the ‘Flip Book’ feature, it’s much easier to read than with the clunky interface at Google Books. (more…)

I came across some nice documentation of Athens State Hospital which was made available online by Ohio University’s library. Most impressive is Katherine Ziff’s lengthy dissertation Asylum & Community, and this collection of old images. I was especially pleased to see the alligator in the fountain. Till now I STILL didn’t quite believe that an alligator really lived there, even though several sources said so. The story just screamed urban legend to me.

But now I know the truth and I can finally sleep through the night—no more waking up at 2AM wondering “Did an alligator REALLY live in the fountain at Athens? It CAN’T be true…Can it?”

A somewhat related item is an online comic about the infamous stain inside the Athens Kirkbride. Darkhorse Comics recently added it to their MySpace profile. It’s a little on the spooky side, but it’s October, so I’ll play along:) It is kind of cool to see a Kirkbride drawn like that too. There should be more Kirkbride buildings in comics I think. (more…)

The Campaign for Greater Buffalo History, Architecture & Culture will be revealing its proposal for the Buffalo State Hospital Kirkbride restoration tonight (10/16). The presentation will take place at 7:00PM in St. John’s Church on Colonial Circle. The public is encouraged to attend. There probably won’t be any earth-shattering revelations during this presentation, but at least it indicates things are moving forward. If anyone in the Buffalo area attends, please let us in on the details.

Vote now! No, not for the next president, but for the subject of the next Buffalo-building-themed snow globe! According to Buffalo Rising, last year Avalon Scarves and The Floristry (both of Buffalo, New York) created a snow globe featuring Buffalo’s City Hall. Now they’re asking the public to choose which iconic Buffalo structure should be featured in this year’s globe. They’ve posted an online poll where you can vote, and the Richardson Complex is one of the options! Vote here.

I’m usually skeptical about the paranormal and don’t like the associations often made between ghosts and asylums. But I do like being scared and I willingly set aside my skepticism around this time every year. I’m not sure how I feel about Scariest Places on Earth though. The episodes I’ve seen were far too overdone and just downright silly. That said, Dixmont State Hospital will be featured on a special airing of Scariest Places on Earth this month. The program will be shown October 28th at 10PM on ABC Family as part of their 13 Nights of Halloween. I’ve never seen this particular episode, so I can’t really say I recommend it. It’s probably worth catching just to see the Kirkbride building though.

The future of the historic Center Building in Topeka, Kansas isn’t looking so good. This last remnant of the Topeka State Hospital Kirkbride is in danger of being torn down. The Topeka Unified School District is considering the purchase of the former state hospital grounds on which the building stands. If they do buy the property, many of the abandoned buildings on the property will be demolished, and the Kirkbride admin will very likely be among their number. While I’ve heard that this structure’s future hasn’t looked particularly hopeful even before now, I think this is the first indication of any real plans to knock it down.

Back in January, I wrote about some of the less well-known web pages linking to this site which I thought might be of interest to you. Since then, I’ve found a few more worth pointing out and as promised, I’m listing them here…

Placeography is a wiki site where people share information about locations (eg houses, buildings, parks, neighborhoods, etc). The Fergus Falls State Hospital page links to KirkbrideBuildings.com. It also links to a page where you can hear a two-part radio series on the hospital, Update: Fergus Falls Mental Hospital.

Here’s a long article about the renovation of Building 50 at the former Traverse City State Hospital: Granting Asylum. It’s a bit old (published in 2006), but it’s worth reading if you’re not familiar with the story of Building 50’s rebirth or if you want to learn some of the finer details. (more…)

There’s a new web site dedicated to Harrisburg State Hospital: The City on the Hill. It’s the work of Phil Thomas (otherwise known as thomasp94 on the forum) who has diligently compiled old pictures, his own photographs, and lots of historical facts to create the site. It includes a healthy portion of information about the Kirkbride building there (which was demolished a long time ago).

It’s worth taking a look, especially for the Kirkbride gallery which includes blueprints, maps, and old photos from inside the Kirkbride. Strangely, Phil has found more photos of the interior than the exterior.

Once again, Asylum Projects forum member Squad546 has discovered a Kirkbride building that I haven’t seen mentioned anywhere before (including here:\). While scanning Sanborn Maps from around the country, Squad came across this example of everybody’s favorite kind of asylum building at Central State Hospital in Petersburg, Virginia…

Originally known as the Central Lunatic Asylum, the hospital was founded in 1869, although it moved to its present location in Petersburg in 1885. That’s where the Kirkbride was built. It appears to have been demolished as I haven’t been able to find any trace of it in aerial photographs. The only possible image of the Kirkbride that I’ve been able to find online is on the Historic Asylums’ Central State Hospital page (direct link to image).

There’s a pretty thorough history of the institution on the University of Virginia Library web site. It’s kind of interesting that the hospital was originally created for the treatment of African-American patients only. While segregated mental hospitals weren’t a novelty in the past, this is the only one I know of that had a Kirkbride building.