Danvers State Hospital
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Danvers State Hospital (officially known as the "State Lunatic Hospital at Danvers") was built in 1878 (and opened in the spring of that year) under the supervision of prominent Boston architect Nathaniel Jeremiah Bradlee, on an isolated site in rural Massachusetts. It was a multi-acre, self-contained psychiatric hospital designed and built according to the Kirkbride Plan.
Contents |
[edit] History
Constructed at a cost of $1.5 million, with the estimated yearly per capita cost of patients being $3,000 the hospital originally consisted of two main center buildings, housing the administration, with four radiating wings. The administration building measured 90 by 60 feet, with a tower 130 feet in height. Connected in the rear was a building 180 by 60 feet, in which the kitchens, laundries, chapel, and dormitories for the attendants. In the rear is the boiler house of 70 feet square, with boilers of 450 horsepower, used for heating and ventilation. Water was pumped from Middleton Pond. On each side of the main building are the wings, for male and female patients respectively, connected by small square towers, with the exception of the last ones on each side, which are joined by octagonal towers. The former measured 10 feet square, and were used to separate the buildings. The original plan was designed to house 500 patients, with 100 more possible to accommodate in the attic. However, by 1935, 2,150 patients were being housed, and overcrowding was severe.
While the hospital was originally 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. In the 1890's, Dr. Charles Page, the superintendent, declared mechanical restraint unnecessary and harmful in cases of mental illness. By the 1920s the hospital was operating school clinics to help determine mental deficiency in children. During the 1960s as a result of increased emphasis on alternative methods of treatment, deinstitutionalization, and community-based mental health care, the inpatient population started to decrease.
Due to budget cuts within the mental health system the hospital was closed in June 1992. The area itself is completely closed and monitored closely by campus security. In December of 2005, the property was sold to Avalon Bay Development. Demolition of most of the buildings began in January of 2006, with the intent to build 497 apartments and condominiums on the 77 acre site.
As of June 2006, all of the Danvers State Hospital buildings that were marked for demolition have been torn down, including all of the buildings on the lower grounds and all of the buildings on the hill except for the center most sections of the kirkbride building. Avalon Bay predicts that they will have properties available for rent/sale by Fall 2006.
[edit] Trivia
- Danvers State Hospital was almost located in Winthrop, Massachusetts under the name "Massachusetts State Hospital", however it was decided that the Danvers Location was better suited for the needs of the state.
- The hospital was the setting for the 2001 horror film Session 9.
- The Danvers State Insane Asylum may have been the inspiration for H.P. Lovecraft's Arkham Sanitarium, which in turn was the inspiration for Arkham Asylum in the Batman comic book series. Danvers also appears in H.P. Lovecraft's short stories "Pickman's Model" , "Herbert West Reanimator" and "The Shadow Over Innsmouth".
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- Tracy, Cyrus M. (1878) History of Essex County, Mass.
- The American Historical Society Inc. (1935) The Story of Essex County
