I Want To Explore An Abandoned Mental Asylum
A Youtube Travelog Through The Former Snake Pits Of The Northeastern Usa... An arty video made up still shots of abandoned USA mental hospitals, very recently uploaded to YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GzfwT8sc5Q
I suspect that the making of these images required trespassing. YouTube has a surprising number of videos of this nature, done by self-styled "urban explorers." Here is a fairly polished case in point:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6MS1vWtkXg
These hospitals were not all Gothic nightmares. The big buildings at Byberry, for example, were art deco from 1940-50. The Northville hospital in suburban Detroit opened in 1952 and featured the functional brick look of that era.
I have no urge to visit these places myself. Doing so is illegal (although the cops have bigger fish to fry) and dangerous. If something went wrong, it could be quite hard for an ambulance crew to reach me in a timely fashion. Most of all, horrible things occured in these state hospitals. Before 1950, there were no drugs for mitigating the symptoms of manic depression and schizophrenia. So people were locked away for good. Barbaric methods were resorted to: lobotomy, electroshocks, insulin injections, padded cells, and the good old straightjacket. Old people were sent there because they were senile; in those days, nursing homes could not cope with dementia. Others were sent there because they could not support themselves and no relative was willing to take them in. That happened to a great aunt of mine; she spent the last 20 years of her life in a state hospital, dying in 1952. The only people at her funeral were her sister and her sister's husband. The newspaper did not print an obit.
Nowadays, the nut cases are put on Disability, given a presc<x>ription for lithium or thorazine, and given a place in a halfway house. The worst cases wander the streets muttering to themselves.
I have no clue why states don't raze these ruins and put the land to another use.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GzfwT8sc5Q
I suspect that the making of these images required trespassing. YouTube has a surprising number of videos of this nature, done by self-styled "urban explorers." Here is a fairly polished case in point:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6MS1vWtkXg
These hospitals were not all Gothic nightmares. The big buildings at Byberry, for example, were art deco from 1940-50. The Northville hospital in suburban Detroit opened in 1952 and featured the functional brick look of that era.
I have no urge to visit these places myself. Doing so is illegal (although the cops have bigger fish to fry) and dangerous. If something went wrong, it could be quite hard for an ambulance crew to reach me in a timely fashion. Most of all, horrible things occured in these state hospitals. Before 1950, there were no drugs for mitigating the symptoms of manic depression and schizophrenia. So people were locked away for good. Barbaric methods were resorted to: lobotomy, electroshocks, insulin injections, padded cells, and the good old straightjacket. Old people were sent there because they were senile; in those days, nursing homes could not cope with dementia. Others were sent there because they could not support themselves and no relative was willing to take them in. That happened to a great aunt of mine; she spent the last 20 years of her life in a state hospital, dying in 1952. The only people at her funeral were her sister and her sister's husband. The newspaper did not print an obit.
Nowadays, the nut cases are put on Disability, given a presc<x>ription for lithium or thorazine, and given a place in a halfway house. The worst cases wander the streets muttering to themselves.
I have no clue why states don't raze these ruins and put the land to another use.
70-79, M