Kirkbride Buildings - Historic Insane Asylum Architecture

Last week someone on the forum posted a link to a Time Magazine Story which mentioned Traverse City State Hospital. It gave me the idea to check for more stories concerning state hospitals from Time’s extensive 86 year archive. While there weren’t any amazing finds, there were a few interesting items…

Medicine in a Mad House (1934) – Tells the story of how a patient filled Danvers State Hospital‘s kitchen sugar cans with cockroach poison, killing another patient and making 13 others seriously ill.

Government Inspiration (1936) – This story about government sponsored art during the New Deal starts off with a description of a mural painted at Elgin State Hospital. I just thought it was interesting that the artists were instructed to “use only the softest shades of primary colors, to ‘avoid all exciting combinations.'”

Unhappy Anniversary (1952) – The sad story of Miss X, Topeka State Hospital’s oldest resident in 1952. She had been admitted to the hospital in 1882.

Reinforcement Therapy: Short Cut to Sanity? (1969) – Experiments in something called “Reinforcement Therapy” at Anna State Hospital in Illinois.

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…)

A few weeks ago, one Jennifer Shipp emailed me pictures of Anna State Hospital (now Choate Mental Health Center) in Anna, Illinois. I was surprised to see that there’s actually a bit of its Kirkbride building left. I thought it had been completely torn down, but I was wrong. I apologize for misleading anyone regarding the status of this Kirkbride and have dutifully updated the Kirkbride lists.

As you can see from the pictures below, two stories of the administration center and a piece of wing off either side remain. I was told a fire (one of many in this hospital’s history) destroyed the upper floors. It’s sad to see the building so diminished, with only faint hints at its former grandeur. But I guess it’s better than nothing.