How beautiful is this? I’ve decided to braden the scope of my blog to include images, words and experiences that move me. (I could probably go on about the urban vernacular, but will spare you, for now at least.)
“Once state-of-the-art mental healthcare facilities, Kirkbride buildings have long been relics of an obsolete therapeutic method known as Moral Treatment. These massive structures were conceived as ideal sanctuaries for the mentally ill in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Careful attention was given to every detail of their design in order to promote a healthy environment and to convey a sense of respectable decorum. Placed in secluded areas within expansive grounds, many seemed almost palace-like from the outside. But growing populations and insufficient funding led to unfortunate conditions that spoiled their idealistic promise.
Within decades of their first conception, new treatment methods and hospital design concepts emerged and the Kirkbride design was eventually discarded. Many existing Kirkbride buildings maintained a central place in the institutions which began within their walls, but by the end of the twentieth century many had been abandoned; several had been destroyed. Although a few have managed to survive into the twenty-first century intact and still in use, many that survive sit abandoned and decaying—their mysterious grandeur intensified by their derelict condition.”
