November 24th, 2008
Things have been really slow in Kirkbride news lately. While there have been some minor developments, they’re really nothing new, definite or exciting—just incremental changes in the status of a few buildings. I haven’t been creative enough lately to come up with posts in spite of that lack of activity too, so I have to apologize again for the lack of new information here lately. When I started the blog I planned on posting once a week. Until now, I actually managed to do that—surprising since I half expected to run out of things to post about after a few months.
Anyway, for the lack of anything better to post, I thought I’d point you to a collection of Kirkbride building desktop wallpaper. The backgrounds are mostly old historical images we’ve all seen before, but here they’re nice and big to fit on your computer desktop. Enjoy.
November 14th, 2008
Sorry for the lack of posts lately. I’ve been busy and haven’t heard anything noteworthy about Kirkbride buildings or related topics in a while. But just to keep things going, here’s another installment in The Lost Kirkbrides series: Agnews State Hospital, a Kirkbride building I found out about only recently…
Agnews State Hospital in Santa Clara, California opened in 1889 as The Great Asylum for the Insane. Its Kirkbride building stood for just seventeen years until the great earthquake of 1906 caused irreparable damage to the structure and the death of 117 people. The dead were buried in mass graves on the hospital grounds. The Kirkbride had to be torn down. It was replaced in 1911 by a new arrangement of buildings based on the Cottage Plan. (more…)
November 6th, 2008
In case you ever doubted the legitimacy of “The Stain” inside the Athens State Hospital Kirkbride, Ohio University researcher Glen Jackson has found that it is indeed a remnant of Margaret Schilling’s decomposing body. You can read about Jackson’s findings in The Athens News: Forensics Tackles Athens Lore. As the article explains, a residue of decomposed human tissue and a chemical cleaner mixed to cause the discoloration.
While there really wasn’t much room for skepticism as to whether Schilling’s corpse caused the stain 30 years ago, there was a bit of mystery over what process actually left the mark. This study dispels most of that mystery, but as Jackson says, it’s still not clear how the stain took the form of a human body. If somebody had cleaned the floor the way you’d expect them to, the stain would have been much more irregular. It might be wrong to expect people to always do things the way you’d expect them to though.
November 3rd, 2008
In case you read this post and were wondering how the voting went, the Richardson-Olmsted Complex is the winning architectural landmark! With 34% of the vote, the old asylum building will be featured in this year’s snow globe. Unfortunately, it sounds like the globe won’t be available for the holidays. Read more on Buffalo Rising. I thought it was interesting that people tried to “stuff the ballot box” as they put it. Who’d have thought people were so passionate about a snow globe? My only problem with this whole thing is that I can’t find any information on how to actually buy a globe. I guess maybe you have to go to The Floristry in Buffalo to get one?
October 30th, 2008
An article in the Valley Advocate describes multiple problems with the creation of a Northampton State Hospital memorial: The Theft of Memory. As the article’s subtitle says, “In spite of contractual and moral obligation, there may be no memorial to the mentally ill on the prime land that was their legacy from the state.”
While I can almost understand (but definitely not agree with) the desire to demolish an old asylum, it seems unconscionable to me to destroy such a place and then willfully, or even unintentionally, make it difficult for a fitting memorial to be created. This also reminds me that the memorial at Avalon Danvers hasn’t been completed either. I guess developers here in Massachusetts either 1) really are afraid that any hint of a psych hospital connection will scare away prospective customers (as if people are too clueless to discover the connection without a memorial), or 2) are just too stingy to spend a tiny fraction of their budget on a memorial, even when they’re obligated to by contract. Even if those two possibilities are false, we’re still left with the fact that the memorials are obviously the last thing on the developers’ minds and will probably end up being hastily tossed together displays not worthy of being called memorials. It’s a sad final chapter in the story of these old asylums.
October 29th, 2008
The recent tours of Oregon State Hospital’s J Building proved to be very popular. However, the Statesman Journal reports that there won’t be any more of them because of demands on staff and upcoming asbestos abatement. You can read their article on the subject here: Popularity of J Building Tours Isn’t Enough to Continue Them. Make sure to check out the video tour. There’s a 10+ minute version in the upper left right (ah, duhhh…), and an unedited 48 minute version at the end of the article (which I’ll also include here to save you a click). It’s pretty interesting, especially if you’re a fan of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
. (more…)
October 28th, 2008
Of course they didn’t really tear it down, but Google Maps did replace the old aerial photograph of Danvers State Hospital (which included the full Kirkbride in all its glory) with a more recent photo showing a half built Avalon Danvers. It was always something of a comfort that even though Danvers was gone, Google Maps still had an image of the untouched Kirkbride up. Now they’ve updated and the illusion is gone.
Microsoft’s “bird’s eye view” of the former DSH campus still shows the full Kirkbride. But you’d better see it while you can. I’m sure it won’t be around for too much longer either. There’ll always be Historic Aerials of course, but somehow it’s not the same.
October 27th, 2008
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…
October 24th, 2008
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…)
October 17th, 2008
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…)
