Morris Plains, New JerseyGreystone ParkOver 670,000 square feet for 350 patients. Who builds that big for so few, and where did 7,700 people come from?Opened 1876. Built for 350 patients, all 673,700 sq ft of it; at its peak it held more than 7,700 people.
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Asylums · Medfield, United States
Medfield State Hospital
The open question
A hospital for 2,200 next to a town of 1,493. Who was it really built for?
On the record
The asylum was established in 1892 as the state's first facility for dealing with chronic mental patients. The complex included 58 buildings at its height on a property of some 1.4 sq mi (3.6 km2), and a capacity of 2,200 patients. The college-like campus was designed by William Pitt Wentworth and developed between 1896 and 1914, after an era dominated by asylums built using the Kirkbride Plan.
Sources
More from Asylums
Morris Plains, New JerseyGreystone ParkOver 670,000 square feet for 350 patients. Who builds that big for so few, and where did 7,700 people come from?Opened 1876. Built for 350 patients, all 673,700 sq ft of it; at its peak it held more than 7,700 people.
Athens, OhioAthens Lunatic Asylum (The Ridges)A small Ohio town gets a palace on a hill. Why so big, so soon after the Civil War?A Kirkbride hospital run from 1874 to 1993. The main building had room for 572 patients, almost double Kirkbride's own recommendation.
Virginia Water, Surrey, EnglandHolloway SanatoriumYou don't build a Gothic palace to house the ill. Why build it like a cathedral?Paid for by the patent-medicine millionaire Thomas Holloway and built 1873–85 in an elaborate Franco-Gothic style by W. H. Crossland. Pevsner called it and its sister college the 'summit of High Victorian design'.
Willard, New YorkWillard AsylumFour hundred suitcases never collected. Who were these people, and why did no one come for them?Opened 1869 for low-cost long-term care. In 1995 about 400 suitcases brought in by patients were found in an attic.