Tour of the Madhouse

What is “madness”? How have we defined it over the years, and how has society chosen to deal with those it defines as “mad”? In the H.H. Richardson Complex in Buffalo just blocks from our house, we have a living document of how a previous era chose to approach these questions.

The building itself is remarkable. Both the impetus to build it and the concept behind it were born of the “moral movement” in relation to treating madness that took root throughout Europe and spread to the U.S. during the 19th Century. The idea was to provide the mad with spacious grounds in which to wander and exercise, give them well-lit and ventilated shelter, and generally avoid the overcrowding and inhumane treatment in “prison-style” asylums of previous eras. Richardson — at the time an unknown architect — was awarded the design, and Frederick Olmsted (also responsible for Central Park in NY, Delaware Park here in Buffalo) worked on the landscape and grounds, which initially covered some 900 acres but now have mostly been divvied up with Buffalo State.

When it opened in 1880, it only housed a few hundred patients; part of the idea of the curved corridors (see the pictures) was to discourage administrators from shoving beds and patients into them. The building was designed to capture maximum light in all the wards, with common areas for patients to gather in. Olmsted even thought of tilting the buildings in relation to the avenue, so it wouldn’t look so imposingly “asylumlike” from outside — this is also the idea behind the way the buildings gradually get smaller and “retreat” the further they are from the central towers; from above, it’s said the complex resembles a “flock of geese.” Despite the effort to avoid overcrowding, the asylum housed over 3,600 patients post WWII. Beds were shoved close together in areas that were meant for common space.

It still operated as an asylum till the mid-1970s, and the tower building still housed administrative offices till the mid-90s. As noted in the photos, the hospital scene from The Natural was filmed in one of the wards. I was unable to find a satisfactory site on the complex, but here are some great photos of the inside of the buildings. We only got to see the more preserved Building Ten.

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ONE MORE THING…
happy anniversary to my lovely wife. To repeat the question I asked this morning: are you better off today than you were four years ago?