By the 1960s, state hospitals had become outdated and unnecessary due to better psychiatric medications, a more enlightened approach to treating mental illness and the establishment of a statewide system of community health centers. A replica of the original tower/steeple on the Kirkbride was built to duplicate what was removed around 1970, due to structural issues. The renovations turned the once-macabre lunatic asylum into Avalon Danvers Apartments. I remember driving up Route 1 in the summer when I was a kid, with my dad., in the 1960s, to go to WatsonS Farm to get fresh corn. Shock therapy and straight jackets became the norm. I am looking for the full name of a Dr. Sullivan who worked at Danvers State Hospital in 1970 who lived in Topsfield or Ipswitch MA. For more information about the court case, check out this website. The only thing that remains of the asylums past is the graveyard on the grounds. Sterling Publishing Co, Inc, 2005. My Uncle Ted died in the hospital as well. However, back in the day, when Session 9 first premiered, several locals from Danvers visited the location and posted pictures of it on social media. In 1910, the hospital changed its name to the Foxborough State Hospital as it began to transition more towards treating mentally ill patients instead of alcoholics. My brother and I drove up there a few years ago we were curious about the new apartments the apartment building reflect the architecture but neither of us have any desire to live there. The hospital closed in 1992 and remained abandoned until each of the three towns the hospital is located in began redevelopment plans for their section of the property. Infamous, haunting, beautiful, a memory ~ Snuck in myself in 2003 he he he. In 2005, a development company bought the rundown property and tore down a large portion of the buildings. An Act Making The Gardner State Colony A Reception Hospital For The Insane And Changing Its Name to Gardner State Hospital. State Library of Massachusetts, archives.lib.state.ma.us/handle/2452/60457Richard, Mike. Nurses would pull and drag patients by their hair. Pictures still clinging to the wall of one of the children's rooms in the hospital. The annual reports written by the hospital trustees highlighted the hospitals growing problems, such as this report from 1939: During the last year the problem of overcrowding became more apparent than in past years, Beginning in August, there was a marked increase in the admission rate of elderly psychotic persons, and for the first time, this group outnumbered the younger group. Danvers State Hospital Cemetery Danvers, Massachusetts Danvers State Hospita was built in the mid-1800's and operated until 1992. Built in 1902, the Gardner State Hospital was originally known as the State Colony for the Insane until it changed its name to the Gardner State Hospital in 1935. At a cost of $1.5 million at the time, the hospital originally consisted of two main center buildings, housing the administration, with four radiating wings on each side of the Administration Block. Medfield State Hospital is an abandoned psychiatric hospital in Medfield, Massachusetts. In 2018, Arcadia Publishing published the book Danvers State Hospital as part of its Images of America series. The facility that once housed Danvers State Hospital is now home to a residential community featuring fully renovated apartments. The original hospital, known as the Worcester Lunatic Asylum, was built in 1833 which makes it the first state hospital built in Massachusetts. Built in 1851 and opened in 1854, the Taunton State Hospital was originally known as the Taunton Lunatic Asylum or the State Lunatic Hospital at Taunton, and it was the second psychiatric hospital built in the state, following Worcester State Hospital which was built in 1833. The Danvers State Hospital had been a mysterious place for many years, even after its demolition in 2006. In 1998, the Danvers State Memorial Committee, a mental health advocacy group composed of former Danvers State Hospital patients, was created to identify the names of the hundreds of former patients buried anonymously in the Danvers State Hospital cemetery. However, the buildings dark past make it one of the creepiest monuments to insane asylums in the world. Also during this time, the place was decaying and not maintained. Address: Corner of Chestnut and Main Sts., Foxborough, Mass. This guy could have been in management. I had to pick up an ex from there one night.upon entering the grounds i received that same uncomfy feeling.heebie neebies, to say the least. In 1989, the Kirkbride building was shuttered after the remaining patients were moved to the Bonner medical building. Danvers State Hospital, originally known as the State Lunatic Hospital at Danvers, was significant in both architectural and social history. The facility started to decay in the 1960s due to budget cuts. By the 1880s, the property primarily became a hospital helping both mentally and physically ill patients. By 1985, the majority of the original hospital wards were closed or abandoned. The Danvers State Hospital, also known as the State Lunatic Hospital at Danvers, The Danvers Lunatic Asylum, and The Danvers State Insane Asylum, was a psychiatric hospital located in Danvers, Massachusetts. Tunnels of Traverse City State Hospital A subterranean world of tunnels links several buildings of this rare 19th-century asylum. Supposedly they used to lead to the Danvers State mental hospital where the transferred patients with Tuberculosis (and other ailments) to and from the hospital without exposing them to the outside world. The hospital featured a main building, where the administration offices were located, with four wings radiating off both sides of the structure. Danvers State Hospital Kirkbride Complex circa 1893. The hospital began closing wards and facilities as early as 1969. (Brendan Sexton III) finds himself trapped in the tunnels as the lights begin to go out, one by one. Im told that a portion of this building was a reform school. In February of 1991, Governor Weld appointed a seventeen-member special commission to study the problem of state-operated hospitals, since it was found that a disproportionate share of the Department of Mental Health budget, about 47%, went to funding its antiquated state hospitals, even though they served just 6% of DMH consumers (Hogarty 7). The hospital closed down in 1976 and the administrative building in the center of the complex burned in 2006 and was torn down. If you wanted to find ghosts, this would be the place. By the early 1880s, overcrowding had already become an issue, with the hospital housing around 626 patients in 1881 and around 788 patients in 1885, as reported in the 1885 Annual Report of the Trustees of the Danvers Lunatic Hospital: The number of patients sent here has for a considerable time been too large, and the increase continues to exceed all relief from removals.The crowded condition of the hospital was not provided for in its design or construction.. Considering the appalling history of insane asylums it makes sense why people find these places creepy. Some of the atrocities that he documented were starvation diets, restraints used on patients, the dungeon ward in the basement, rats feeding on dead victims in the morgue, overcrowding, and other physical abuses. You can check them out below: A post shared by Josh Richardson (@cool_shit_i_see), #ThrowbackThursday to the early 2000s when I visited the filming location for the psychological horror film 'Session 9' (2001) in Danvers, MA. It consisted of a total of 58 buildings on 900 acres of land with thousands of doctors, nurses and support staff. Did they lose money or show positive cash flow? Conditions at the hospital grew worse and worse as the administrations pleas for more funding fell on deaf ears. The hospital opened on May 1st, 1878 and the hospitals first patients arrived on May 13th. In addition, several former patients and staff members have also published memoirs about their time at the hospital, including Nobodys Child, published in 1987 by former patient Marie Balter, who returned to the hospital in 1988 to work as the Chief Hospital Spokeswoman, and Danvers State: Memoirs of a Nurse in the Asylum, published in 2004 by Angelina Szot. In 1909, the Danvers Insane Hospital changed its name again to the Danvers State Hospital. In 1994, the hospital was added to the National Register of Historic places and it officially closed its doors on April 3, 2003. Wright & Potter Printing Co, 1886.Anderson, Katherine and John Duffy. It was part of the countrywide concept - at least in the late 1800s - that people with psychological problems needed to be cured inside specially made facilities. Sorry. There was a tunnel that ran from a steam/power generating plant (which still exists to provide service to the Hogan Regional Center) located at the bottom of the hill running up to the hospital, along with tunnels that connected the male and female nurses homes, the "Gray Gables", Bonner Medical Building, machine shops, pump house, and a few others. The property also had an administration building, medical-surgical facility, staff housing, morgue and a power plant. Patients were moved to the Bonner Medical Building across the campus. So this video is unlike my usual videos. In 1954, Dr. Clarence Bonner retired as superintendent. Danvers State Mental Hospital was built by prominent architect Nathaniel Jeremiah Bradlee from Boston, in an extremely rural, out-of-the-way location called Hathorne Hill. Steam Tunnel. Address: 45 Hospital Road, Medfield, Mass. It's a different, more in depth, creepier tnnel that goes all the way up the hill to the asylum before it is blocked off. We were just so shocked we were inside the tunnel that I didn't really think much about the video while I was recording. By 1881, there were over 500 patients living in the facility. Yesterdays Grim Asylums, Tomorrows Grand Apartments. Wall Street Journal, 27 July. The Metropolitan State Hospital was built in 1927 and opened in 1930. He was injured in the war. We just went to see if it were true, and there it was! While the asylum was established to provide residential treatment and care to the mentally ill, its functions expanded to include a training program for nurses in 1889 and a pathological research laboratory in 1895. Many patients would just vanish. It wasnt until 1994 that the hospital was shut down. 84002436 Added to NRHP January 26, 1984 When the first patient was admitted on May 13, 1878, the Danvers Lunatic Hospital, as it was originally called, was a one-of-a-kind facility. The Danvers State Hospital was a psychiatric hospital located in Danvers, Massachusetts. In the 1870s, when the commonwealth of Massachusetts decided to build an additional psychiatric hospital to house the states growing mentally ill population, it decided on the rural Hathorne Hill as the location and persuaded Dodge to sell his 200-acre farm to the state for $39,542. My grandmother lived there until she died. In 2005, the hospital was purchased by Avalon Bay Development for $12 million with the plan to turn it into an apartment building. 2023 Cinemaholic Inc. All rights reserved. (I have an even better Danvers State tunnel video on my channel as well. A common death that occurred there was aspiration pneumonia, which happened when patients were force-fed while being tied down to their beds. The Northampton State Hospital was an abandoned state hospital that has since been demolished. Batavia, Illinois Batavia Depot Museum An exhibit of items. Plan of the Hospital, illustration published in the Annual Report of the Danvers Lunatic Hospital, circa 1886. This was a REALLY awesome explore though! my grandmother had cancer . By 1945, the Grafton State Hospital had 1,730 patients and 250 staff and a sprawling property with numerous buildings. Rebecca is a freelance journalist and history lover who got her start in journalism working for small-town newspapers in Massachusetts and New Hampshire after she graduated from the University of New Hampshire with a B.A. My husband recalls his grandmother being in a place called Hickstory ( spelling may be off) they lived in Andover/Lawrence area. If the name Arkham sounds familiar, DC Comics latched onto the name and created Arkham Asylum as the backdrop for where Batmans ultra-psychotic villains come from. Fortunately, Hathorne Hill met all of these requirements, as it was the site of a large farm in the countryside on a scenic hill yet it was in close proximity to Salem and Boston and nearby railroads and good roads. For more information on historic state hospitals, check out this article on abandoned mental hospitals in Massachusetts. Located in Danvers and first opened in 1878, the Danvers Lunatic Asylum (as it was also called) was an isolated and almost totally self-sufficient hospital. The administration building, which is located in Waltham, remains abandoned. The asylum at Danvers was structured in this Kirkbride framework by architect Nathaniel J. Bradlee. Language links are at the top of the page across from the title. A total of 278 people died at the hospital that year. Most of the buildings on campus were connected by a labyrinth of tunnels. 2010,www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2010/06/10/danvers_state_redevelopment_forging_ahead_in_slow_economy/Roy, Mathew K. Change Atop Hathorne Hill. Salem News, Eagle-Tribune Publishing Company, 5 Jan. 2007Danvers State Hospital. Opacity, opacity.us/site22_danvers_state_hospital.htmDanvers State Hospital. Danvers Archival Center, Peabody Institute Library, www.danverslibrary.org/archive/?page_id=1096Danvers State Hospital. Kirkbride Buildings, www.kirkbridebuildings.com/buildings/danvers/History. Danvers State Insane Asylum, www.danversstateinsaneasylum.com/historyEx-Patient Is State Hospital Official. New York Times, New York Times Company, 27 Nov. 1988, www.nytimes.com/1988/11/27/us/ex-patient-is-state-hospital-official.htmlHistory of Essex County, Massachusetts; Volume 1. In 1939, the medical community was looking for a permanent fix to the crisis facing mental health facilities. The Foxborough State Hospital is an abandoned treatment facility that has since been partially demolished and re-purposed into condominiums. These five mental institutions live up to the name of creepiness and horror. The building remains abandoned but is still standing. By 2002, the committee succeeded in identifying the names of over three-quarters of the patients buried in the cemetery and installed new headstones displaying the names of each patient and erected a memorial to the patients whose graves could not be identified. With its peaked towers, labyrinthine corridors, and network of underground tunnels, the abandoned hospital was as creepy as a movie set. Patients walked through hallways naked. Patients unable to bathe themselves would be left in their own fecal matter for days on end. The rooms were cold because there was no central heating. People werent being cured. "TheKirkbride Complex occupying Hathorne Hill was designed in the Victorian Gothic style", "On June 24, 1992 the last clients were transferred to Tewksbury and Danvers State Hospital closed", "A court judge paved the way for the town to issue a demolition permit to Avalon Bay". If youve already watched the film, youll very well know how it makes a whole new character out of its location. Danvers State Hospital was the inspiration for the notorious horror writer and occultist, H. P. Lovecraft's Arkham Sanitarium in his 1933 story 'The Thing on the Doorstep', and the Arkham Asylum of Batman fame is an identical replica. Patients would be tied to their beds. The facility was in Laurel, Maryland and operated by the District of Columbia. Beautiful building. In December 2005, the property was sold to AvalonBay Communities, a residential apartment developer. It was originally built to house 500 patients, but by the 1940s it had over 2,000 patients. I live in a town close by and it is something that has always interested me. Originally constructed in 1878, the Danvers State Hospital opened under the original name of the Danvers Lunatic Asylum. The dark history behind this former insane asylum in Massachusetts will give you chills. For more information on Forest Haven Asylum, check out this website. As terrifying as the films mental hospital setup may seem, youll be surprised to know that the films real filming location, Danvers State Hospital, has a very dark past of its own. In the fall of 1990, the Massachusetts Association of Mental Health published a working paper suggesting that three state hospitals, Danvers, Metropolitan, and Northampton, were prime candidates for closure. im happy to pay for the reproduction of some or all depending on cost.

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