Kirkbride Buildings - Historic Insane Asylum Architecture

I’m on vacation right now, but wanted to make a quick post to keep things going. Here are a few Kirkbride-related news items from the last week or so.

Some brief memories of Weston State Hospital are given by former employee Michael Mays in this story about West Viginia’s state mental health system: Three Steps Forward, 50 Years Back. According to the article, WV’s mental health care isn’t necessarily getting better in spite of improvements, and in some cases the same mistakes are being made over and over again. Similar criticisms are often made about mental health care around the rest of the country unfortunately…

The Weird New Jersey guys’ latest merchandising endeavor Weird US: The Board Game features Danvers State Hospital among other locations. I guess it’s kind of cool that DSH is iconic enough to be included in a board game, but it seems kind of cheesy and not very respectful. I have to admit I haven’t actually seen the game in real life (and probably never will;), so I can’t really comment on how DSH fits in or how it’s portrayed. I’m skeptical that this is a good thing though…

Looks like there’s not much chance of a film being shot at the Fergus Falls Kirkbride after all: City Council Delays Movie Action. As one reader comments, the delay is most likely a passive-aggressive political maneuver meant to squash filmmaker Dav Kaufman’s hopes of shooting at the RTC. The Friends of the Kirkbride weigh in with a separate opinion piece, saying the film wouldn’t be a good thing: Friends: Film Jeopardizes RTC.

While I don’t put much stock in the idea that a small-time, independent thriller would permanently damage the former state hospital’s reputation, it’s true that the movie might not add much in the way of positives and that national exposure would be limited. I think it would’ve been great however to have the Kirkbride featured in a movie, even if it only turned out to be an underground favorite. I guess that’s not a good enough reason to give Kaufman the green light, but I don’t believe the opposing argument is a good enough reason to refuse him either.

BTW: I recommend reading the comments accompanying both Fergus Falls pieces above. Some of them are better than the actual articles, and the back and forth can be pretty funny sometimes. It’s good to see that a lot of Fergus Falls residents care enough to comment.

The Fergus Falls State Hospital Kirkbride building may become the setting for a movie. According to the Fergus Falls Daily Journal, Twin Cities filmmaker Dav Kaufman is working on a new film and has the RTC specifically in mind as its location: Filmmaker Has RTC in Sight.

Session 9 did a lot to introduce Danvers State Hospital to the world. While it sounds like this movie will be a low budget affair, there’s a chance it’ll become something of a cult favorite like Session 9, and could bring the RTC some broader, national exposure if it gets made. Hopefully it will and the quality of the film will be relatively high with the building used to good effect.

A delegation from China visited Fergus Falls last week to inspect the RTC Kirkbride building. In case you don’t know, they’re considering using the former RTC for a Chinese language and business school.

From what I’ve heard there weren’t any dramatic or surprising developments during the visit. But things appear to have gone well and the tone in the local media is optimistic. Below are links to some related articles. (more…)

Things have been a little slow in the Kirkbride newsroom lately. Aside from last week’s excitement over the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum, there haven’t been many new developments in the world of Kirkbrides—just some rehashing of the same old news.

So here’s a post about more old Kirkbride photos on the web that people might not be aware of. In a previous post on the same topic, I mentioned that I couldn’t find some photos of Worcester State Hospital which I had come across earlier in the American Memory Collection. I found them again fortunately. As stated before though, the quality isn’t so hot. Maybe the originals are good (it might be worth getting copies), but the electronic versions available on the web site aren’t. That said, here are the links. (more…)