Comments

The first room looks like it has a huge map on the wall.

If I'm not mistaken, it's actually a "doohickey"

Being a bean-counter, I'd say its a matter of paperwork vs reality.

When these places closed down, they would have had an enormous asset register ... a register full of equipment that was either surplus to requirement, or just not viable to relocate (ie cost to much to ship it to another hospital). It wouldn't have been written off because as far as the financial accounts state, it has a value, and you can't just throw away expensive equipment (whether its going to be used or not). Of course now, its been depreciated past any value so the people who were refusing to let it be trashed dont care about it now anyway, as it was probably written off the ledger years ago... either that or the depreciation rate of a chair is so astronmically low they are still claiming depreciation on it. You might find it has a book value of $27.42, depreciating at a huge .13c per year, in which case that puppy's good for another 211 years!

It would have been interesting to see what this room originally looked like as compared to now!

Motts, this is an amazing picture, it looks like something straight out of a photography book, only with the unique "Mott's edge" haha, perfection.

That chair looks like a rusty good time.

dianne,

I'm from MA, so it kind of hurts when people are so willing to say it's all MA's fault for letting the place go. It happens all over the place so there's no point in placing the blame on a figurehead.

Danvers is a really unfortunate case of special interest. I hate to think about what's going to happen to it (but que sera, sera, it's already happening) and the developers that are actively involved. It sucks.

But there are cases in which the land is going to be developed for a more practical reason, say, legislators working to demolish Worcester's hospital in order to build a new one. I don't want to see WSH go, but heck, we need more hospitals desperately (for the record, some of the patients at WSH were released to some kind of halfway house in my hometown - because what we really need is sexual deviants living next to the YMCA, right?)!

I'm just wary of saying, I hope such-and-such never happens...you know?

Before I looked at the caption I tried to tap in to my "picture solving" skills, never guessed it was a piano, guessed my skills are lacking these days. Very interesting..

If you watch the scene in the movie where they show the suits from this angle you can actually see the middle finger showing. So it must have been done by someone in the movie crew as a joke.

Because it simply didn't matter at the time - that's why.

What do you do with something that's no longer being used? Trash it or leave it behind.

Yes, I'm sure some of it would sell quite well on eBay, but things like eBay didn't even exist when some of these places closed, and I doubt the state would have gone for that anyway.

Very interesting perspective!

mmm mmm meal time, let's dish up!

I grew up in Emsworth. The entrance to Dixmont had to large pillars inside the gate was a white house on the right where Dr Camarata and his family lived. I played with the younger daughter Susan many times. The buildings at that time were beautiful and the place was always busy. The patients worked on the grounds you would see the trucks with men in the back standing with garden tools. They had guards that would watch the patients work so they wouldnt escape this was in the 1950's

Does any one know why they left so much stuff to rot away. Some that stuff would probably sell nice on ebay because of the history

That machine looks like it can cause some damage!