67 Comments Posted by owen

These shots remind me of that bit in 'Escape From New York', when Snake Plisken (Kurt Russell) finds 'Cabbie' (Ernest Borgnine) enjoying a shabby vaudeville performance with his fellow convicts in a decaying Broadway theatre lit by candlelight.
Surely the mezzanine area must have been for staff- there's no way they'd risk patients killing themselves jumping over the edge! It'd also be a good lookout point, to keep an eye on all that went on below.

Looks like it must have been beautiful once.

we used to have a system here in England in our big old mental hospitals, whereby potentially dangerous inmates were put in promenade rooms like this for excercise. They'd be located in the middle, with a nurse or orderly at each end. That way they could be kept a watch over, whilst allowing the staff time to get out and lock the door behind them if the patient suddenly took a run at them. Maybe that's why the chair in this picture is in the middle of the corridor??

Confirmed from close observation- distant object is an electric fan. They were wasteful leaving that there!

This image would make a good album cover....

Why did they leave so many newish, serviceable extinguishers around? presumably the place is still patrolled occasionally- maybe they need to still have the wherewithall to fight a blaze in case of arson.

At least they were trying to brighten the place up a bit....

Do all American toilets have those horseshoe seats on them? Whilst we have them here in the UK as well, they're unusual- ours are mostly complete circle seats (though the horseshoe design is more hygienic, there's less chance of men weeing on the front edge!!)

Very poignant- some poor ill person did that, long ago, to claim a moment of sense in a storm-tossed soul...bless them.
Stock it may be, but even so they've done the colouring and shading very well- look at the texture they've given to the background, and the grading of the colour on the butterfly's wings. Mott, if you ever return there, do you think you could salvage this pic and send it to me? I'd like to have it.

Yeah, they'd have to be break-proof mirrors if mental patients were using the place; if they weren't, they could use broken shards to cut their wrists or something.

I agree with Smurfy and Bill, I think it shows how careful they were to make the place as well equipped as their budget would allow.

I agree, I think it's beautiful too- definitely beneficial to soothe a patient's troubles. They should have decorated much more of the place like this- maybe they did and it's since rotted away, I don't know...

Maybe this kind of dorm was for the less severely ill, who didn't need to be observed all the time in case they hurt themselves or someone else. I guess the type of accomodation they got was geared to whatever their mental illness was.....

Looks like this room might have been for patients to get fresh air who were too dangerous to risk allowing outside the building- there don't ever seem to have been ordinary glassed windows in it, not even the remains of window frames. Maybe it was a kind of high-security excercise room or something.

Were these done by patients as art therapy, or were they conventional artwork used to decorate common rooms and staff quarters?
The upright one on the left looks like some kind of waterfront scene, it has a duplicate lying on the floor upside-down; the right-hand upright one looks like a Japanese style ink study of a bird or something.
The others all seem to be scenic views of one kind or another- the yellowy-brown one seems to be of horses or deer, upside down.