Kirkbride Buildings - Historic Insane Asylum Architecture

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.

Yesterday, Richard Nickel, Jr. over at The Kingston Lounge posted about the Buffalo State Hospital Kirkbride. Along with a nice write-up about the building, he included some first-rate photos of the Kirkbride’s interior, something my own site is still sorely lacking:(

It’s worth checking out, and you can do so here: BSH – The H. H. Richardson Complex.

On Tuesday there was a public meeting concerning efforts to preserve the Buffalo State Hospital Kirkbride. At the meeting, the Richardson Center Corporation revealed their Historic Structures Report (available for download on their documents page). The report is a beautifully comprehensive collection of history and images of the hospital buildings, and you should definitely check it out.

I haven’t digested the whole report yet, but the part I find most interesting so far is the description of the hospital’s construction, development and eventual downsizing which begins on page 62. Included are maps of the hospital campus during different time periods, as well as photos of the buildings from over the years. Especially striking is an old photo from about 1880 of the unfinished Kirkbride (page 70). (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.

I like all Kirkbride buildings, but definitely not equally. I have my favorites. Below is a list of the five I like most. Before we get to the list though, here’s a little disclaimer: this list is based solely on aesthetics and does not mean that these are particularly good examples of Kirkbride buildings, or that these were the best hospitals in terms of treatment, recovery rates, staff, etc. Also, I’m only counting the buildings I’ve been to. There are other Kirkbrides I would have considered, but they were demolished decades ago and I don’t want to evaluate them on photographs alone.

And now, without further ado… (more…)

Just a reminder to those of you in the Buffalo, NY area: there’ll be a public meeting about the Richardson Complex this Wednesday, April 16th. The meeting starts at 6PM and will take place at the Buffalo and Eerie County Historical Society, 25 Nottingham Court, in Buffalo. Findings, recommendations, updates and plans on stabilization and redevelopment will be presented.

If anyone reading this attends, please let me know of any surprising or especially good/bad news. Thanks. I’m hoping there’ll be some fantastic revelation about preservation and reuse of this historic building—it’s definitely one of my favorites. I won’t be surprised if it’s just a rehashing of things we’ve heard before though. Things usually turn out to be a lot less exciting than my hopes… *sigh*

There’s an article in The Buffalo News about repairs getting underway at the former Buffalo State Hospital Kirkbride. Stabilization, roof repair, electricity and added security seem to be the priorities. There’s no surprising information here if you’ve been keeping up with the story, but the photos accompanying the article are a nice surprise. They show work being done on one of the outlying brick wards—the part of the building least likely to be saved. While it doesn’t mean anything for certain, it makes me hopeful that preservation of the brick wards is at least a possibility.

Note: Some time after this post was published, The Buffalo News archived the article mentioned and it is no longer available without a membership to their web site. The article can still be read here, although the pictures aren’t included.

A while ago I came across some photos of Taunton State Hospital on the Library of Congress’ American Memory web site. They’re part of a collection of photos put together by the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) to document achievements in architecture, engineering, and design in the United States. Of course I immediately searched for images of other asylums, but didn’t find much of interest in terms of Kirkbrides (except for these photos of Buffalo State Hospital). A few days ago I had a few hours to kill and discovered that there were actually lots of photos of other Kirkbride buildings in the collection. Here’s what I found: (more…)