The Architect The Architecture The Hospital

The Hospital Mental illness was once considered a disease of personal failing or a spiritual disease (the mentally ill patient was often considered possessed by evil spirits, thought to be under the spell of witchcraft, or influenced by the moon, from the origin of the term "lunacy"). The insane were seen as incurable, subhuman creatures doomed to a life in shackles and chains at an almshouse (poorhouse) or in jail cells for the mad. Construction of the Buffalo State Hospital, which was one of several asylums erected by the state just after the Civil War, extended over many years. In May 1870, Governor Hoffman instructed the new board of managers to acquire plans for the institution that was to occupy 200 acres of land in north Buffalo. Dr. James P. White, a prominent local physician, headed the board, and Dr. John P. Gray, the renowned director of the Utica Asylum, acted as consultant. In August 1870 the board accepted Richardson's ground plans for a 600-patient structure. Groundbreaking ceremonies took place in June 1871, and the first patients were received in the half-finished complex in 1880. The entire complex was eventually completed in 1895, nine years after Richardson's death. The Hospital was made to be of peaceful, sanitary living conditions for the mentally ill. By the 1920s through the 1940s that had all changed. The Population had grown more than 2600 patients. Which left many sleeping on floors, porches and stairwells. World War II provided a unique opportunity for conscientious objectors to serve their country in alternative service. Many were assigned to the state mental hospital and were dismayed by the impersonal, sometimes cruel and brutal treatment inflicted upon persons with mental illness. After World War II, there was a wave of modernist design in psychiatric architecture. The design of that era favored white walls, linoleum floors, no applied ornament, and windows that didn't open. People believed that this clean, hygienic design created a controlled environment. Doctors used drugs that were not adequately tested, as well as electroconvulsive therapy (which was first called electroshock therapy), insulin shock therapy (which induced comas in patients by the injection of insulin), Metrazol (induced seizures), hydrotherapy (the wet sheet pack, the continuous bath), fever therapy and lobotomy. The procedure of the lobotomy, introduced in 1946, was often performed with an ice pick on the frontal lobes of the brain. While it did serve to tranquilize some agitated patients, it more or less deprived them of their social skills and judgment. Nonetheless, the director of this procedure won the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine. This therapeutic technique would fall by the wayside with the introduction of antipsychotic drugs in the 1950s. In the 1960s through the 1970s, Many reports had surfaced regarding Hospital Staff and Patient Treatment. Starvation, Embezzlement, Suicides, and Unexplained Deaths. In 1974 the hospital had closed and was left abandoned. The Hospital remains vacant to this day, and awaits revitalization from the city government.