Wing

That rounded section on the right side of the structure puts me in mind of English architecture.

thats exactly what i thought when i saw this picture lynne.
copycat :- ~

reminds me of a quaker round house or grain building

it seems to have english/french architecture about it

It's a beautiful building.

I have a class currently on the Psychology of Death and Dying and my instructor was a councilor for terminally ill patients at Worcester State hospital. As she was talking about some of the patients who were particularly memorable, I was thinking about Mott's pictures. It sort of came full circle for me and made me think a bit more about the actual people who lived here.

I stood right here and smoked one the other night. I felt as though I wasn't alone.

The original Kirkbride idea of the wings is that the rooms wouldn't look into other rooms, and also have a maximum of fresh air.

The panaramic view just blows me away. Indeed Lynne, an old english castle.

I work near here, and being able to see it portrayed is very nice. I was informed by an old employee that the passageways need not be narrow, there are underground catacombs that serve as connections between the buildings. From what she has told they are very haunting and eerie.

where is this place at?? i wanna check it out!

Now, you know we can't tell you that. ;)

I miss me some Gage Turret. :( That'll look lovely when I'm home for my winter break.

GEORGIOUS!!!! Wonder what was in the round structure?

Im only 18, but since i was 12 years old ive been looking at lonline research here and there, about the patients and the construction os the builsing. I found that the round structure in this picture was a food storage facility.

Backhoe ruin the West Wing of the Worcester State Hospital in 1991

This Building was built in 1352

I worked at WSH 52-56 the round bldg that stood by the main bldg was a patient dormatory. I worked the ward on the 1st floor the round bldg was part of my ward (salisbury 1 ) also worked patient shower room & others

any one know of JEWEL eatery across from entrance to WSH. it was a hang out for us attendants & student nurses. I married one. I know alot about WSH when it was open. even worked violent ward. know all about morgue to

I was there when escaped patient from mid west was made superentendant WSH. made all papers in states. great story. hard to believe BUT true.

Amazing looking place.

I was at WSH on 1/17/08 - my daughter is a photography student at Worcester State. We tried to get into the building(s) but could not get in; a police cruiser came by immediately after we entered onto the grounds. It is a very sad place indeed. My daughter took plenty of photos from the outside but we would love to see what the inside looks (and feels) like.

p.s. - Does anyone have any information about a haunted house in Westport, MA (now destroyed) along route 195 E? If so please contact me with info at kaziglu-bey@hotmail.com - Starting to do research for a book that I want to write re: the house and the cementery near by - Thanks

Reminds me of an old English castle and continues to strike me as so overbearing and ominous!

it really is a beautiful building though, isn't it.

yet awkward at the same time.

This in Worcester Right?

I'm thinking it could be Worcester Left, but Navi would have to tell us for certain.

wow, it's quite large.

teve_paradise, weird, I live in North Dartmouth MA (right next door to westport, drive down the entire stretch of route 6 in westport almost daily but have never seen or heard of a haunted house along that way. Just did some research online and all I can find is rumors like "family burial ground, civil war burial, or indian cemetary"

I love the history of the north east, I've gone walking in what I thought was the middle of nowhere and stumbled upon gravesites. Amazing how they still stand, I wish there was an easy way to find all the history of this stuff.

My mother was committed to this institution and I used to have to visit her there in the one of the wards when I was a kid. It was a sad place.

I'm interested in hearing more about the patient shower rooms. I worked with a person with developmental disabilities who had been in an institution for nearly 50 years when the institution closed in the late 1990s. When we trained new staff to work with this person in the community home, we had to emphasize that only tub baths, rather than showers, be used because of his intense phobia of water falling on his face. This reportedly stemmed from the group showers that he had received in earlier years in the institution, which I know were not done to frighten or hurt patients, but were necessitated by lack of funding and staff to care for the large number of patients. Of course, any technique can conceivably be misused and perhaps at some point there was a caregiver who used the shower or water that was too hot or too cold as a means of behavioral control.

I think the round structure in the photograph is the one identified as Hooper Hall in the old photos on the Worcester State Hospital intro page. There is an interior photo also with a caption that identifies it as a day room. Perhaps one floor was the dormitory and the other floor was the day room?

The 1949 photos from Life Magazine on the intro page are wonderful! I had never been able to imagine what the "spinning chair" therapy looked like (all I could think of was one of my wonderful uncles who had a swivel chair in his ham radio room, and was the one adult who would let us kids spin as much as we wanted to). Is it true that a person with schizophrenia does not get dizzy from the spinning that makes a "normal" person dizzy? If so, there may be some medical significance to that....I know that schizophrenia usually emerges in a person's late teen years, and I remember that when I was a child, I could go on spinning rides at the fair over and over without dizziness (and never understood why my parents complained after one ride). Then when I was about sixteen, I went on a ride twice in a row, something I had done many times in previous years, and was so dizzy and sick that I had to sit on a bench for the next hour. It's probably two completely unrelated events that happen at the same time, but what would it mean if there is some kind of neural connection between not experiencing dizziness and the onset of schizophrenia?

dme - I´ve never heart about any connection between schizophrenia and dizzyness, but I can tell you that it is totally normal that things that didn´t make you dizzy as a child do make you feel sick as an adult. And, sad enough, schizophrenia can develop through you whole life. There are types that develop during your teen years, but there are types that develop in adulthood or even in childhood (early onset schiziphrenia, which is even the worse type of it).

But because your post is now nearly three years old you probably won´t read it anymore ;)