Tag Archives: Butler Hospital

Many Asylums Have Stood the Test of Time

Dr. Isaac Ray, First Superintendent of Butler Hospital

Dr. Isaac Ray, First Superintendent of Butler Hospital

Though the medical era they represented is usually dismissed as inferior nowadays, the actual physical structures where treatment for the insane took place retain respect. Many asylums from the 1800s still stand, and represent a type of architecture which is impressive, interesting, and, for the most part, unlikely to be duplicated. Anyone who has enjoyed the grandeur of older public buildings like banks, capitol buildings, libraries, and the like, know that modern architecture is all too often merely utilitarian rather than beautiful or majestic.

Efforts to keep old asylums intact, or to restore them, are constant. A nomination form to place Butler Hospital on the National Register of Historic Places discusses the institution’s buildings in detail. The hospital had been expensive to build because its supporters wanted spacious, uncrowded rooms with good ventilation and heating–unlike the prison atmosphere so prevalent in facilities for the insane up to that point. One of the structures on the premises was the Richard  Brown house, built circa 1731, and one of the first brick homes in Providence, Rhode Island.

Butler Hospital, courtesy City of Providence

Butler Hospital, courtesy City of Providence

The hospital grew and added structures over the years, and some the architectural detail the writer discussed included: frontal gables with glazed carriage entrances, octagonal columns, and a “three-story crenelated stairtower.” Building styles included Tudor, Colonial Revival, and Gothic Revival, set within beautifully landscaped grounds.

Description of the Butler Hospital for the Insane, courtesy National Library of Medicine

Description of the Butler Hospital for the Insane, courtesy National Library of Medicine

Though few people would willingly go to an asylum, Butler Hospital’s original champions seemed to have made every effort to ensure the building was as beautiful and comfortable as its patient population would allow.

Useful Platform

Missouri State Hospital Nurses, circa 1914, courtesy Missouri State Archives

Many superintendents took the opportunity to observe their patients and write about them, both to enhance their own reputations and to share information with colleagues. The American Journal of Insanity was the most important publication superintendents wrote for, since it had a wide readership among fellow alienists. The titles of their works show far-ranging subject matter:

“The Care of the Insane” by Charles Wagner, Superintendent of Binghamton State Hospital in New York.

“The History and the Use of the Term Dementia” by G. Alder Blumer, Medical Superintendent, Butler Hospital in Rhode Island.

“Night Nurses for the Insane” by C. R. Woodson, Medical Superintendent, Missouri State Hospital.

“The Favorable Modification of Undesirable Symptoms in the Incurable Insane” by A. B. Richardson, Superintendent, State Hospital, Columbus, Ohio.

In his quarter-century tenure as superintendent at the Canton Asylum for Insane Indians, Dr. Harry Hummer wrote one article about insanity: “Insanity Among the Indians.” He read this piece during the 1912 session of the American Medico-Psychological Association, and it was included in the four-volume work, The Institutional Care of the Insane in the U.S.A. and Canada, published in 1916.

Binghamton State Hospital

Butler Hospital for the Insane

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