: Health Hinge

The Willard Asylum for the Chronic Insane is a building complex in Willard, New York, near Seneca Lake. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1975.

Western State Hospital, called Western State Lunatic Asylum in its early years, is a hospital for the mentally ill in Staunton, Virginia, which originally began operations in 1828. The hospital was renamed Western State Hospital in 1894. The facility was infamous for its practices of eugenics during the 1930s under then-director Joseph DeJarnette.

In its early days, the facility was a resort-style asylum. It had terraced gardens where patients could plant flowers and take walks, roof walks to provide mountain views, and many architectural details to create an atmosphere that would aid in the healing process.

Western State vacated the property in the 1970s when the hospital moved to its present site near Interstate 81. The original facility was then converted to the Staunton Correctional Center, a medium-security men’s penitentiary.

The Utica Psychiatric Center, also known as Utica State Hospital, which opened in Utica in 1843, was New York’s first state-run facility designed to care for the mentally ill and was one of the first such institutions in the United States, predating and perhaps influencing the Kirkbride Plan which called for similar institutions nation-wide. It was originally called the New York State Lunatic Asylum at Utica. The Greek Revival structure was designed by Captain William Clarke and was funded through a combination of money provided by the state and contributions raised by Utica residents.

The asylum’s first director was Dr. Amariah Brigham, who in 1844 became one of the original founders of American Psychiatric Association. An early proponent of treating mental illness rather than simply confining its sufferers, Dr. Brigham believed that his patients would benefit from the opportunity to work on the asylum’s farm and grounds and on other useful occupational projects. Dr. Brigham established a print shop at the asylum, where he published the American Journal of Insanity (later known as the American Psychiatric Journal). Some of the asylum inmates also produced a journal, called The Opal.

Plaque on gateway pillar on Court Street

The asylum was also the site of the invention of “The Utica Crib”. The Utica Crib was named after the New York State Lunatic Asylum at Utica where it was heavily used in the 19th century to confine patients. The crib was based on a French design, then modified to incorporated slats that gave it an appearance similar to a child’s crib.

[1] The Utica Crib, courtesy of www.mantenostatehospital.com.

While use of the Utica Crib was widely criticized and infamous among patients, some found it to have important therapeutic value. A patient who slept in the Utica crib for several days commented that he had rested better and found it useful for “all crazy fellows as I, whose spirit is willing, but whose flesh is weak.” (Journal of Insanity, October 1864.)

In an opposing view, Daniel Tuke, a noted British alienist (an early term for a psychology expert) writes that, “it inevitably suggests, when occupied, that you are looking at an animal in a cage. At the celebrated Utica Asylum… where a suicidal woman was preserved from harm by this wooden enclosure… Dr. Baker of the New York Retreat allowed himself to be shut up in one of these beds, but preferred not remaining there.”

The Center is now an unoccupied, run-down building, while other more modern buildings on the large property are in use for psychiatric and other medical care. It has been a National Historic Landmark since 1989.[1],[3]

Two Rivers Psychiatric Hospital is a psychiatric hospital located in Kansas City, Missouri.

The facility is operated as a private, for-profit, behavioral health hospital and is owned by Universal Health Services, based out of King of Prussia, PA and opened in October 1986.

Two Rivers Psychiatric Hospital has a broad range of in-patient, partial hospitalization, and intensive outpatient services comprising the following units or programs:

The National Center for Trauma-Based Disorders
Dual Diagnosis and Addictions
Spectrum Adult Services
Renaissance Older Adult Program
Child and Adolescent Program

The National Center for Trauma-Based Disorders has both trauma stabilization and trauma treatment programs as well as a program for those with trauma and co-occurring eating disorders and addictions.

Two Rivers Psychiatric Hospitals is one of two private, free-standing psychiatric hospitals in the Kansas City area, the other being the Research Psychiatric Center.

The Trenton Psychiatric Hospital is a state run mental hospital located in Trenton and Ewing, New Jersey.

It previously operated under the name New Jersey State Hospital at Trenton and originally as the New Jersey State Lunatic Asylum.

Founded by Dorothea Lynde Dix on May 15, 1848, it was the first public mental hospital in the state of New Jersey.

Under the Hospital’s first superintendent Dr. Horace A. Buttolph, the hospital admitted and treated 86 patients.

In 1907 Dr. Henry Cotton became the medical director.

Cotton’s legacy of hundreds of fatalities and thousands of maimed and mutilated patients didn’t end with his leaving Trenton in 1930 or his death in 1933, in fact removal of patients’ teeth at the Trenton asylum was still the norm until 1960.[citation needed]

Starting in 2000, The Minervini Group began negotiating with the Grand Traverse Commons Redevelopment Corporation and secured an agreement to renovate the historic buildings, which were in need of a major renovation. Their efforts have led to the gradual, but successful preservation and development of the Building 50 as part of The Village at Grand Traverse Commons, offering an array of residential and commercial opportunities. By 2005, the southernmost wing and Hall 20 (Phase One) were fully completed and in use. The 100,000 square foot Mercato Phase of the former Building 50 is finished as of Fall 2008. Also on the site, other buildings are being renovated for new uses. These include an urban winery, a fair trade coffee roaster, and a brick oven bakery that opened fall of 2007. As of September 2008, the Minirvi group is starting to renovate some of the cottages, 3 of which will became a hotel. Also the Minervi group plans to begin working on the north wing of building 50 by 2009. Munson Medical Center is currently renovating a 1893 cottage close to its parking deck.

Northern Michigan Asylum for the Insane was established in 1885 as the demand for a third psychiatric hospital, in addition to those established in Kalamazoo and Pontiac, Michigan, began to grow. Lumber baron Perry Hannah, “the father of Traverse City,” used his political influence to secure its location in his home town. Under the supervision of prominent architect Gordon W. Lloyd, the first building, known as Building 50, was constructed with Victorian-Italianate style according to the Kirkbride Plan. In 1963, the main 1885 center wing was destroyed because it was deemed a fire hazard and a new modern building was put up in its place.

Under Dr. James Decker Munson (1845–1929), the first superintendent from 1885 to 1924, the institution expanded. Twelve housing cottages and two infirmaries were built between 1887 and 1903 to meet the specific needs of more male and female patients. The institution became the city’s largest employer and contributed to its growth. In the 1930s three large college like buildings where constructed near the present site of the Munson Hospital Parking deck and the Pavillions. These buildings where demolished in the 1990s because they where deemed ” uncompatible for reuse”

Long before the advent of drug therapy in the 1950s, Dr. Munson was a firm believer in the “beauty is therapy” philosophy. Patients were treated through kindness, comfort, pleasantry, and exposure to the asylum’s plentiful arrangements of flora provided year round by its own greenhouses and the variety of trees Dr. Munson planted on the grounds. Restraints, such as the straitjacket were forbidden. Also, as part of the “work is therapy” philosophy, the asylum provided opportunities for patients to gain a sense of purpose through farming, furniture construction, fruit canning, and other trades that kept the institution fully self-sufficient. The farm began in 1885 with the purchase of some milk cows. Within the next decade the farm grew to have pigs, chickens, milk and meat cows, and many vegetable fields. Most of the farm buildings where destroyed by the state in the mid 1970s. Two large barns (constructed 1901 and 1932) still stand on the South side of the hospital complex.

While the hospital was established for the care of the mentally ill, its reach expanded during outbreaks of tuberculosis, epilepsy, typhoid, diphtheria, influenza, and polio. It also cared for the elderly, and was used to train nurses. After Munson’s retirement, James Decker Munson Hospital was honorably established on the grounds in 1926, which was operated by the state well after his death and into the 1950s. It was then replaced by Munson Medical Center, the largest hospital in northern Michigan and one of the largest in the state.

With the gradual success in drug therapies in the 1970s, many patients were cured and/or improved, leaving the kirkbride and the other victorian buildings vacant by the later half of the decade. This, in addition to changes in mental health care philosophy, the decline of institutionalization, and cuts in funding, the Traverse City Regional Psychiatric Hospital was forced to shut down in 1989.

The Traverse City State Hospital of Traverse City, Michigan has been variously known as the Northern Michigan Asylum and the Traverse City Regional Psychiatric Hospital.

It is the last Kirkbride Building of Michigan’s original four left in the state.

The hospital was authorized by the Virginia General Assembly in the early 1850s as the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum.[5] Following consultations with Thomas Story Kirkbride, then-superintendent of the Pennsylvania Hospital for the Insane, a building in the Kirkbride Plan[6] was designed in the Gothic Revival and Tudor Revival styles by Richard Snowden Andrews (1830-1903),[2][5] an architect from Baltimore whose other commissions included the Maryland Governor’s residence in Annapolis and the south wing of the U.S. Treasury building in Washington.[7] Construction on the site, along the West Fork River opposite downtown Weston, began in late 1858. Work was initially conducted by prison laborers; a local newspaper in November of that year noted “seven convict negroes” as the first arrivals for work on the project. Skilled stonemasons were later brought in from Germany and Ireland.[6]

Construction was interrupted by the outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861. Following its secession from the United States, the government of Virginia demanded the return of the hospital’s unused construction funds for its defense; before this could occur, the 7th Ohio Volunteer Infantry seized the money from a local bank, delivering it to Wheeling, where it was put toward the establishment of the Reorganized Government of Virginia, which sided with the northern states during the war. The Reorganized Government appropriated money to resume construction in 1862; following the admission of West Virginia as a U.S. state in 1863, the hospital was renamed the West Virginia Hospital for the Insane. The first patients were admitted in October 1864, but construction continued into 1881. The 200-foot (61 m)[8] central clock tower was completed in 1871, and separate rooms for black people were completed in 1873.[5][6][7] The hospital was intended to be self-sufficient,[7] and a farm, dairy, waterworks, and cemetery were located on its grounds,[5] which ultimately reached 666 acres (266 ha) in area. A gas well was drilled on the grounds in 1902.[6] Its name was again changed to Weston State Hospital in 1913.[5]

Originally designed to house 250 patients in solitude, the hospital held 717 patients by 1880; 1,661 in 1938; over 1,800 in 1949; and, at its peak, 2,400 in the 1950s in overcrowded conditions. A 1938 report by a survey committee organized by a group of North American medical organizations found that the hospital housed “epileptics, alcoholics, drug addicts and non-educable mental defectives” among its population. A series of reports by The Charleston Gazette in 1949 found poor sanitation and insufficient furniture, lighting, and heating in much of the complex, while one wing, which had been rebuilt using Works Progress Administration funds following a 1935 fire started by a patient, was comparatively luxurious.[6]

By the 1980s, the hospital had a reduced population due to changes in the treatment of mental illness. In 1986, then-Governor Arch Moore announced plans to build a new psychiatric facility elsewhere in the state and convert the Weston hospital to a prison.[6] Ultimately the new facility, the William R. Sharpe Jr. Hospital, was built in Weston and the old Weston State Hospital was simply closed, in May 1994.[5] The building and its grounds have since been mostly vacant, aside from local events such as tours of the first floor for $10.00 and all four floors for $30.00, fairs and church revivals.[6] In 1999, all four floors of the interior of the building were damaged by paintball players; participants in the vandalism were found to include at least twenty local police officers and employees of area law enforcement agencies.[9]

Efforts toward adaptive reuse of the building have included proposals to convert the building into a Civil War Museum[5] and a hotel and golf course complex.[8] A non-profit 501(c)3 organization, the Weston Hospital Revitalization Committee, was formed in 2000 for the purpose of aiding in preservation of the building and finding appropriate tenants.[10] Three small museums devoted to military history, toys, and mental health, respectively, were opened in the first floor of the building in 2004, but were soon forced to close due to fire code violations.[8]

The hospital was auctioned by the West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources on August 29, 2007. Joe Jordan, an asbestos demolition contractor from Morgantown, was the high bidder and paid $1.5 million for the 242,000-square-foot (22,500 m2) building. Bidding started at $500,000.[11] Joe Jordan has also begun maintenance projects on the former hospital grounds. In October 2007,a Fall Fest was held at the Weston State Hospital. Guided daytime tours were offered as well as a haunted hospital tour at night, a haunted hayride and a treasure hunt starting on the hospital front porch. Family hayrides, arts and crafts and local music were also offered.[citation needed]

In 2008, the paranormal investigation group TAPS was called to the hospital to conduct an investigation at the request of Joe Jordan due to purported claims of paranormal activity on the grounds. The investigation is featured on Season 4, Episode 9 of the TV show Ghost Hunters.

The owners are now offering tours 7-days-a-week and haunted tours on Friday nights and overnight stays on Saturdays.

The Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum, formerly the Weston State Hospital, was a psychiatric hospital operated from 1864 to 1994 by the government of the U.S. state of West Virginia, in the city of Weston. The hospital was bought by Joe Jordan in 2007, and partly opened to tours and other money raising events for its restoration.[3] The hospital’s main building is one of the largest hand-cut stone masonry buildings in the United States, and was recognized as a National Historic Landmark in 1990.[1][4]