From state hospital to stately homes
Matthew K. Roy
Salem News
DANVERS - Off the main entrance is a cafÉ with free Internet access.
Scott Dale, a vice president of developer AvalonBay, promised the cafÉ's flat-screen television would be turned to the Red Sox game in time for last night's first pitch. He then imagined the setting as a place neighbors would congregate to watch "Monday Night Football."
Dale yesterday led tours of the Kirkbride building, an abandoned insane asylum recently transformed into upscale apartments. AvalonBay opened the doors of the Kirkbride on the old Danvers State Hospital grounds to give town officials a look at a development years in the making.
Down a long hallway from the cafÉ is a lounge with couches and more televisions. Take a left just before the lounge and there's a basketball half-court.
Turn right and there's a fitness room with a row of treadmills and more flat-screen televisions. Walk through the lounge and out the back door, there's a spacious porch overlooking a swimming pool.
AvalonBay is betting these plush amenities will help trump any hesitation prospective renters may have because of the site's infamous history - lobotomies, electric shock treatments and bodies buried in unmarked graves.
"They've done a very nice job," Planning Board Chairman Margaret Zelinsky said. "It's exciting to see it moving along and being occupied."
AvalonBay purchased the 77-acre Danvers State Hospital site for $12 million late in 2005. The Virginia-based developer is in the midst of building 433 apartments and 64 condominiums atop Hathorne Hill.
Most of the old hospital was demolished to make way for new construction. But 100,000 square feet of the historic Kirkbride, about one-third of the original structure, was saved and refurbished.
The building's 130-year-old Victorian Gothic facade was held in place while the inside was gutted and rebuilt.
"It's the hardest thing I have ever done," Joseph Ssentongo, a project manager for AvalonBay, said of overseeing the construction.
The red brick Kirkbride building, with its steeply pitched sections of roof and gables, now encloses 61 one- and two-bedroom apartments. So far, eight units have been rented.
AvalonBay had to use 31 different floor plans to fit all the apartments into the shell of the Kirkbride. The design challenge generated various perks, like 11-foot ceilings in a first-floor, one-bedroom apartment.
"We had to do that because of the height of the windows," Dale said.
The apartments, mostly carpeted, have granite countertops and maple cabinets.
"The apartments in this building have a little higher level of finish," Dale said.
It means they're a little more expensive than the apartments that are part of the new construction on the site. The one-bedroom showpiece in the Kirkbride would be rented at $1,500 a month, Dale said.
The Kirkbride building, named for 19th-century physician Thomas Story Kirkbride, provides views of Boston and the ocean from its upper floors. Its confines are comfortable and modern, but some of the old lingo is hard to shake.
"This is the end of C ward," Danvers fire Chief James Tutko said, describing the location of an apartment to fellow tour takers.
A fire this April destroyed three unfinished buildings next to the Kirkbride that were to house 147 apartments. State and local fire investigators said Wednesday that the cause of the blaze was "officially undetermined."
The first of those three buildings should be ready for tenants by February. Reconstruction will be complete by May 2008.
The first apartments in the development, across the property from the location of the fire, opened early last spring. So far, 173 apartments have been leased and more than 150 are occupied.
The Kirkbride years:
* 1874: Construction begins atop Hathorne Hill.
* 1878: "The State Lunatic Hospital at Danvers" opens. Boston architect Nathaniel J. Bradlee is behind the Victorian Gothic design.
* 1940s-1960s: The hospital treats more than 2,000 patients at peak even though it was built to handle fewer than 600.
* 1992: State closes hospital.
* 2005: Developer AvalonBay purchases the 77-acre hospital site for $12 million.
* Spring 2007: Fire destroys three unfinished apartment buildings.
* Fall 2007: Apartments fashioned in the 100,000-square-foot section of the Kirkbride spared from demolition are ready for tenants.
Scott Dale, a vice president of developer AvalonBay, promised the cafÉ's flat-screen television would be turned to the Red Sox game in time for last night's first pitch. He then imagined the setting as a place neighbors would congregate to watch "Monday Night Football."
Dale yesterday led tours of the Kirkbride building, an abandoned insane asylum recently transformed into upscale apartments. AvalonBay opened the doors of the Kirkbride on the old Danvers State Hospital grounds to give town officials a look at a development years in the making.
Down a long hallway from the cafÉ is a lounge with couches and more televisions. Take a left just before the lounge and there's a basketball half-court.
Turn right and there's a fitness room with a row of treadmills and more flat-screen televisions. Walk through the lounge and out the back door, there's a spacious porch overlooking a swimming pool.
AvalonBay is betting these plush amenities will help trump any hesitation prospective renters may have because of the site's infamous history - lobotomies, electric shock treatments and bodies buried in unmarked graves.
"They've done a very nice job," Planning Board Chairman Margaret Zelinsky said. "It's exciting to see it moving along and being occupied."
AvalonBay purchased the 77-acre Danvers State Hospital site for $12 million late in 2005. The Virginia-based developer is in the midst of building 433 apartments and 64 condominiums atop Hathorne Hill.
Most of the old hospital was demolished to make way for new construction. But 100,000 square feet of the historic Kirkbride, about one-third of the original structure, was saved and refurbished.
The building's 130-year-old Victorian Gothic facade was held in place while the inside was gutted and rebuilt.
"It's the hardest thing I have ever done," Joseph Ssentongo, a project manager for AvalonBay, said of overseeing the construction.
The red brick Kirkbride building, with its steeply pitched sections of roof and gables, now encloses 61 one- and two-bedroom apartments. So far, eight units have been rented.
AvalonBay had to use 31 different floor plans to fit all the apartments into the shell of the Kirkbride. The design challenge generated various perks, like 11-foot ceilings in a first-floor, one-bedroom apartment.
"We had to do that because of the height of the windows," Dale said.
The apartments, mostly carpeted, have granite countertops and maple cabinets.
"The apartments in this building have a little higher level of finish," Dale said.
It means they're a little more expensive than the apartments that are part of the new construction on the site. The one-bedroom showpiece in the Kirkbride would be rented at $1,500 a month, Dale said.
The Kirkbride building, named for 19th-century physician Thomas Story Kirkbride, provides views of Boston and the ocean from its upper floors. Its confines are comfortable and modern, but some of the old lingo is hard to shake.
"This is the end of C ward," Danvers fire Chief James Tutko said, describing the location of an apartment to fellow tour takers.
A fire this April destroyed three unfinished buildings next to the Kirkbride that were to house 147 apartments. State and local fire investigators said Wednesday that the cause of the blaze was "officially undetermined."
The first of those three buildings should be ready for tenants by February. Reconstruction will be complete by May 2008.
The first apartments in the development, across the property from the location of the fire, opened early last spring. So far, 173 apartments have been leased and more than 150 are occupied.
The Kirkbride years:
* 1874: Construction begins atop Hathorne Hill.
* 1878: "The State Lunatic Hospital at Danvers" opens. Boston architect Nathaniel J. Bradlee is behind the Victorian Gothic design.
* 1940s-1960s: The hospital treats more than 2,000 patients at peak even though it was built to handle fewer than 600.
* 1992: State closes hospital.
* 2005: Developer AvalonBay purchases the 77-acre hospital site for $12 million.
* Spring 2007: Fire destroys three unfinished apartment buildings.
* Fall 2007: Apartments fashioned in the 100,000-square-foot section of the Kirkbride spared from demolition are ready for tenants.
This article was
written by Matthew K. Roy
and published by Salem News
on Saturday, September 29