this page outlines what all the buildings were used for (also scroll over the map and click to see lots of other pictures) don't miss this, either
Flicka asked:
Why the insane asylum? I'm not asking that facetiously, I really want to know.
And I may give a longer answer than she needs!
I could swear I've written about the State Hospital before, but darned if I can find the post...suffice to say one night a friend and I had a ghost siting there...
Hmm. The State Hospital. When I was growing up it was acres of crumbling gorgeous buildings, beautiful trees, lots of spooky, eerie stories and a magnet for angst-ridden teenagers. My mother worked in a building across the street (the old nurses residence) and in the basement there was a tunnel leading across the street to many of the major buildings. It was rumored the grounds around the hospital complex were riddled with those tunnels, and searches would be made by flashlight at night, trying to find a way into the boarded-up stately place.
I've actually been in the main building (with permission! honest!) - the last part of it closed down in 1989, and I remember a pervasive smell of mildew, a room with crumbling wall paper, and chairs that looked like they'd been there forever.
There were so many stories! Although there was a general feeling of healing, of the drawing up and scarring over of an old wound around the huge trees and little courtyards, there were still tangible reminders that this had been a place of suffering not too long ago. I've been to the graveyard where many of the patients were buried, and I've seen dusty rooms with old stretchers stacked against the wall, restraints hanging drunkenly off the sides. There was a gorgeous building with a two-storey balcony - astoundingly beautiful, if you ignored the metal grid that kept people in.
When I was older I used to go for long solitary walks there - there were miles of trails - and I used to soak up the quiet and wish someone could find a way to bring life back to all that gorgeous architecture before all the buildings rotted to the ground. The (modern medical) hospital began to encroach upon its borders, and ominous noises began to be made about bulldozing the lot and using the space for a (sacrilege!) parking garage and perhaps a heli-port.
I moved to Canada while the debate was still raging, but I miss being able to grab my music player and stroll through all that space, all that healing, going-back-to-wild acreage in the midst of suberbia.
And from a crumbling eyesore that noone wanted to destroy but was too expensive to rebuild to this a place where the gracious old buildings live in harmony with rehabbed spaces. I haven't been there (I haven't been back!) but I can't wait to see....
8 comments:
What a cool place (now...your then) and how lucky you've been to stroll there. Haunting, really, even from this far away.
Very cool.
Places like that have their own energy. doesn't they?
Umm, did I miss the details of the ghost siting? Inquiring minds want to know.
I meant: don't they?
Neat post! This place sounds like a wonderful place to spend long hours strolling through and enjoying the solitude, wondering about all the stories that lurk in the halls and buildings. Thanks for sharing.
Blogger is playing silly with me this morning- eating all my comments.
Great post Jess!
There's a place like that in the city next to where I grew up. It's very cool, although still very creepy. There's a great author who sets a lot of his stories in that place.
And in hipster city to the north of me, they are slowly turning the grounds into condos/apartments. There are some old, sad buildings left and they fascinate me.
Wow, how interesting! Thanks for answering.
Sarge spent a lot of time in psychiatric facilites during the first three years of our marriage because of his brain injury. Some of them were lovely and some them were prisons. Some of the ugliest ones had the best staff and one of the loveliest is one I'd never trust him to again. I think that's part of why I was curious about your building. I wonder who passed through there, I wonder about the people who loved them. I wonder where those families are today. Your story makes me feel a little wistful.
I had to check the fine print on the pictures, because it looks so much like our tumbling down insane asylum in town. Part of it is now being renovated into apartments for affordable housing (socialist town in a Republican state, although less now) but the main building is tumbling into the weeds. There was a really lovely show at the Library gallery of the abandoned rooms. There is something compelling about the old buildings, ghosts and memories and all.
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