Worcester State Hospital was a
state mental hospital located in
Worcester, Massachusetts
Worcester ( , ) is a city and county seat of Worcester County, Massachusetts, United States. Named after Worcester, England, the city's population was 206,518 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, making it the second-List of cities i ...
. It is credited to the architectural firm of
Weston & Rand. The hospital and surrounding associated historic structures are listed as Worcester Asylum and related buildings on the
National Register of Historic Places
The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...
.
It was once known as the Worcester Lunatic Asylum and the Bloomingdale Asylum. The hospital dates back to the 1830s. On January 12, 1833, the Worcester Insane Asylum opened. It was the first of its kind in the state. During the first year, 164 patients were received.
As the facility soon became overcrowded, superintendent Merrick Bemis called for the construction of a new asylum. A massive structure was to be laid out in the
Kirkbride Plan
The Kirkbride Plan was a system of mental asylum design advocated by American psychiatrist Thomas Story Kirkbride (1809–1883) in the mid-19th century. The asylums built in the Kirkbride design, often referred to as Kirkbride Buildings (or si ...
and located on Belmont Street. Construction began in 1870 and the newly built Worcester State Hospital was completed in 1876 at the cost of well over a million dollars.
The wards were named after places in Massachusetts as well as numerous founders of the
American Psychiatric Association
The American Psychiatric Association (APA) is the main professional organization of psychiatrists and trainee psychiatrists in the United States, and the largest psychiatric organization in the world. It has more than 37,000 members are involve ...
, such as Howe, Appleton, Woodward, Gage, Hooper, Folsom, and Thayer.
History
In 1901 a satellite facility which became the
Grafton State Hospital
Grafton State Hospital was a psychiatric hospital in Grafton, Massachusetts that operated from 1901 to 1973. Today, the site has been redeveloped with Tufts University's Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine as a major occupant, along with the Gr ...
was opened in nearby
Grafton, Massachusetts
Grafton is a town in Worcester County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 19,664 at the 2020 census. The town consists of the North Grafton, Grafton, and South Grafton geographic areas, each with a separate ZIP Code. Incorporated in ...
to give non-violent patients an opportunity to engage in therapeutic work in a rural environment.
![Worcester state insane asylum postcard 1905](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7f/Worcester_state_insane_asylum_postcard_1905.jpg)
During its operation, the hospital housed thousands of patients. In 1949, the daily operations of the facility were documented by
''Life'' magazine.
In 1958, the Bryan Building was added to relieve stress on the aging Kirkbride complex. Operations slowly transferred to Bryan until the original Kirkbride was abandoned in 1985.
In 1991, the Kirkbride suffered numerous fires which left the left wing destroyed and the right wing partially damaged. In 1992, the state declared the site "an effective total loss".
Current use and redevelopment
Although the facility was officially closed in 1991, operations still continued in the Bryan Building until 2012. In 2004 a proposal to build a new facility on this property was put into the works and called for all of the remaining newer and old building to be torn down.
Erecting the new hospital would take the place of both the current
Westborough State Hospital
Westborough State Hospital, originally "Westborough Insane Hospital", was a historic hospital in Westborough, Massachusetts, which sat on more than . The core campus area was located between Lyman Street and Chauncy Lake, north of Massachusetts ...
,
Taunton State Hospital
Taunton State Hospital is a psychiatric hospital located on Hodges Avenue
in Taunton, Massachusetts. Established in 1854, it was originally known as the State Lunatic Hospital at Taunton. It was the second state asylum in Massachusetts. Most of th ...
, and the Bryan Building of Worcester State Hospital.
In 2008, there were plans to film
''Shutter Island'' on the grounds of the hospital. Because of the pending demolition of the facility, filming was not approved and instead the filming took place at
Medfield State Hospital.
In 2008, the remaining buildings on the property with the exception of the Administration Block (with its notable clock tower), the Hooper Turret, and the Hale Building, were torn down.
In the spring of 2009 construction on the new hospital began. Designed by Ellenzweig Associates the new facility is 428,000 square feet and
LEED Gold Certified.
The new hospital, dubbed Worcester Recovery Center & Hospital (WRCH), was completed in October 2012
and has three recovery stages - House, Neighborhood, and Downtown, progressing as recovery increases.
The facility has 260 adult beds, 30 adolescent inpatient beds and 30 adolescent intensive residential treatment beds.
All patients in Bryan were transferred to the new complex within a month of the new facility's opening.
In 2015, the salvaged clock tower was transformed into a memorial, dedicated to the original Kirkbride building and the effect Worcester had on American Psychiatry.
In 2018, the former employee cottages were razed and plans to demolish the Bryan Building and Hale Buildings gained popularity in favor of a new biomedical campus.
Notable faculty
*
Andras Angyal
Andras Angyal ( hu, Angyal András; 1902–1960) was an American psychiatrist, known for a holistic model for a theory of personality.
Work
His 1939 work on "The Structure of Wholes" was seen as a precedent to systems theory in books in the 1960s ...
, Psychiatrist in the research unit from 1937 to 1945.
*
David Shakow
David Shakow (1901–1981) was an American psychologist. He is perhaps best known for his development of the Scientist-Practitioner Model (or ''Boulder Model'') of graduate training for clinical psychologists, adopted by the American Psychologica ...
,
[American Journal of Orthopsychiatry Volume 7, Issue 1, pages 32–35, January 1937] Psychologist in the research unit
See also
*
Worcester State Hospital Farmhouse
*
References
External links
* . (Various documents).
Kirkbride BuildingsWorcesterMass* http://www.opacity.us/site56_worcester_state_hospital.htm
* Th
are located in the Northeastern University Libraries, Archives and Special Collections Department, Boston, MA.
* http://www.asylumprojects.org/index.php?title=Worcester_State_Hospital
{{authority control
1876 establishments in Massachusetts
Psychiatric hospitals in Massachusetts
Demolished buildings and structures in Massachusetts
Government buildings on the National Register of Historic Places in Massachusetts
Hospitals established in 1876
Hospitals in Worcester, Massachusetts
Defunct hospitals in Massachusetts
Kirkbride Plan hospitals
Gothic Revival architecture in Massachusetts
Government buildings completed in 1876
Hospital buildings completed in 1876
National Register of Historic Places in Worcester, Massachusetts