Kirkbride Buildings - Historic Insane Asylum Architecture

Please help the Athens County Historical Society and Museum save the Athens Kirkbride by signing this online petition.

Ohio University (current owner of the former Athens State Hospital site now known as The Ridges) is set to tear down an historic building at the site next month. Read more about it here: Ridges TB Ward to Be Razed Next Month Despite Historical Society Efforts to Save It. Although the structure being demolished isn’t the Kirkbride, the article also mentions the university’s plans to tear down most of the Kirkbride building’s wings in the future. See this diagram for what will be destroyed: Plans for The Ridges.

The Athens County Historical Society and Museum is trying to get the school to preserve the remaining buildings at The Ridges, including the Kirkbride. To help them, please sign the online petition. Also please consider contacting the university’s president and board of trustees directly.

Sign the Petition

Restore and Maintain Athens Asylum Buildings for Posterity »

Contact the President and Board of Trustees

Ohio University Office of President (contact info at bottom of page)

Ohio University  Board of Trustees (contact info at bottom of page)

There’s a new book about Athens State Hospital coming out. On Friday, March 30th from 5:00-7:00PM Ohio University Press is hosting a free public event at The Kennedy Museum of Art to celebrate the release of Asylum on the Hill by Katherine Ziff. (In case you didn’t know, the museum is located in the former Athens State Hospital Kirkbride building in the neighborhood now known as The Ridges.) Read more about it here: Ohio University Press Event Celebrates New Book on Athens Asylum

Some special points of interest about the event mentioned in the article:

“Items relating to the former mental institution will be featured in displays arranged by Ohio University’s Mahn Center for Archives and Special Collections and the Athens County Historical Society. There will also be a self-guided tour of The Ridges from 3-5 p.m. in which visitors may look inside some of the institution’s buildings while learning about their current use. Tourists will be able to obtain a new map of The Ridges produced by Ohio University Press that complements “Asylum on the Hill.” Copies of both the map (free) and “Asylum on the Hill” ($35) will be available at The Kennedy Museum of Art and Ohio University Press, also located at The Ridges.”

Learn more about and purchase the book here: Asylum on the Hill: History of a Healing Landscape

I haven’t yet read the book myself, but it sounds very promising. I’m sure anyone with interest in old asylums will find it worth checking out. Katherine Ziff, by the way, is the author of the dissertation Asylum and Community: Connections between the Athens Lunatic Asylum and the Village of Athens 1867-1893 which I mentioned in an old post about the Athens State Hospital alligator. Check out her blog about asylums: Asylum Notes

You can now download a computer-generated version of The Ridges containing a virtual model of the Athens State Hospital Kirkbride. The computer model was developed and produced by Kellye Green, an Interactive Multimedia major at Ohio University. A short video about the project and download links are available at the Soul of Athens web site.

The graphics aren’t quite exact in every detail, but all of The Ridges’ buildings and their configurations are reproduced in this digital world, along with historical information about each structure. My only disappointment was that you can’t get inside the Kirkbride and look around, but I’m sure it would probably have added another few years to the project to have that level of complexity. You can however get up on the roof if you “walk” into the building’s exterior wall and just keep going forward. That’s kind of neat.

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.

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…)

As promised in my last post, here’s another collection of links to old photographs of Kirkbride asylums. There aren’t as many left for me to share as I thought. I really should have just thrown these in with the last bunch, but oh well… (more…)

The asylum in Athens, Ohio is the subject of an article published today on The Athens News web site: The Ridges: Echoes of History. Writer Jenaye Antonuccio describes the asylum’s history and its relationship with the city. Also available on Jenaye’s blog is an un-edited version of the article: Glimpses of Home – The Shape of Lunacy.

In related news, rumors have been circulating recently that some buildings, or parts of buildings, on The Ridges may be torn down due to severe deterioration. Even if these rumors are based on fact, I’m pretty hopeful that no part of the Kirkbride is in jeopardy, but time will tell. I will of course post more about that if anything comes to light.