Leaving Northampton

February 2006- At first glance, the only Kirkbride in Western Massachusetts was foreboding to say the least. From Northampton's Route 66, passing motorists could simply look up the hill and see the red brick of Old Main perched high on Hospital Hill. On a cold, snowy day two years ago I climbed the foot path for my first look at NSH.

The cornerstone of Northampton State was laid on July 4, 1856 in front of townspeople, state and city officials, two bands, and members of the clergy. They watched as a time capsule was buried under the cornerstone, and to close the event, fireworks exploded over Northampton to celebrate both the hospital and the holiday.

Northampton State welcomed its first patients in 1858, the Kirkbride alive with the spirit of moral treatment for the mentally ill on one of the most picturesque spots in Hampshire County. Very little construction occured over the next decade as the hospital slowly took root overlooking the Smith College campus. The farm at NSH was taking shape and in 1864 the hospital elected Pliny Earle as its superintendent, a man who would take the NSH farm and make it self sufficient for the term of his residency at Northampton. The hospital raised and processed its own produce, make and laundered its own clothing, and cleaned and maintained the buildings and grounds.

The late 1860's began the addition of many outbuildings as well as some of the details that made Northampton State unique. The first notable addition to the hospital was the Eastlake Style main gate added in 1867 which still stands at the driveway to the newly constructed Village Hill apartments. The Queen Anne style coach house, which lay behind the main complex was added sometime around 1870 and also can still be seen sitting behind the new construction on Hospital Hill. Ending that first spate of construction was the addition of the fountain that was placed in front of Old Main, the administration building of the hospital, in 1876.

By the turn of the century the hospital was already overcrowded with a population of 600 patients. In 1905 the hospital added a new wing to both the north and south sides of the Kirkbride. The poor, elderly, and homeless were flooding through the doors of the asylum, the hospital's population growing another 400 percent, and two more rear wings were added in 1924 to 1925. As the patient population grew, so did the staff and a separate nurses' home was built in 1928- a large, L-shaped Colonial Revival building set close to the foot path that led to the entrance of Old Main.

October 2008- Late Friday night. A message saying that the last of Northampton's Memorial Complex was being torn down. Construction equipment converged on the opposite side of Route 66 and devoured the two remaining "alphabet buildings".

Begun in 1928, the Memorial Complex across the street from the main hospital campus was built using federal relief aid during the Great Depression. The hospital census had swollen to 2,100 patients and the extra buildings provided a little more space to alleviate the overcrowding but it was short lived. Over the next seven years the Memorial Complex grew to include four, four-story stone buildings identified by a letter, hence the "alphabet buildings" nickname. The roofs of each lettered building were crowned with copper-topped cuppolas. Tunnels ran under Route 66, joining the new addition to the main hospital where on the north side of the Kirkbride, another home for employees was added, mirrored by an identical building for employees on the south side.

The North Employees Home, the building farthest to the right of the Kirkbride, offered me my first access to the hospital. The tunnels underneath the employee housing connected to the North Wing addition so that workers could avoid trudging through the cold New England winters. We followed the tunnels until we were underneath what we knew had once been Old Main, the administration building of Northampton State Hospital. In 2005 the grand portico that once received visitors and patients alike had collapsed from the stress of the elements and neglect, the floors of Old Main following shortly after. The floors had collapsed into the basement, the sight something out of a Victorian drama, wood and brick strewn everywhere while the frozen February air whipped through the holes above us. Chairs, tables, and medical equipment lay everywhere and wooden doors with the suits from a deck of cards cut into them opened into tiny rooms off the sides of the tunnel. We moved on, following the tunnels farther until we surfaced in the cafeteria at the back of the hospital.

The main cafeteria was added to the back of the Kirkbride in 1938, a large addition that threw off the symmetry of the hospital's architecture. Inside, the cafeteria was a large open space with columns lining the east and west walls, a double staircase leading to a prominent oval window on the west wall that overlooked the Male Attendants' Home that had been added in 1932. The same year the cafeteria was built, a fire house was added to the campus, a nod to the continuing growth of the hospital city that had become one of the mainstays of Northampton's economy.

October 2006- There is a meeting in the Haskell Building on the west side of the Kirkbride, behind the Male Attendants' Home, now known as Building 17 (a number assigned by the developer to keep track of each building for demolition and redevelopment). The Haskell Building was one of the final buildings added to Northampton State in 1959 and houses the Western Massachusetts regional Department of Mental Health offices.

The meeting was a memorialization meeting. A board sat and discussed how best way to preserve the history of this venerable institution that would soon be gone. Already construction had begun to redevelop two of the Nurses' Homes into apartments that the developer hoped would be available to rent by January of 2007. The fountain from the front of Old Main had been removed in the hopes that it would become the focal point of the memorialization, however there were no decisions made and a few weeks later the wrecking ball swept through the Kirkbride, reducing it to a field of sand and chips of tile from the morgue. Not long after two of the alphabet buildings of the Memorial Complex were similarly destroyed.

After two years of chronicalling the remaining days of Northampton State, I stood amongst the dust and debris that was once the Memorial Complex, then turned to watch the new construction moving right along where the Kirkbride once stood. I replayed my first, favorite visits when I walked along the back of the cafeteria, around to the nurses' home and into the Kirkbride. I remembered the smell of the tunnels, the cold of the walls, and the views from the barred windows as I looked out over Hospital Hill while kids rocketed down the hill on their sleds. I watched the end of an era, the end of the asylum in Western Massachusetts and though I have by now researched 19 more state hospitals, nothing will ever invoke the same feeling as Northampton- the first Kirkbride I ever photographed, the first asylum I ever wrote about. The beginning of a life-long passion for mental health, and the final act in the life of a hospital.