4,023 Comments for Riverside State Hospital

Yeah that did turn out really cool - it almost looks like two people walking toward you - if I look close enough I can make out some facial features...and the "figure" on the left almost looks like its carrying a candle...and they both look as if they're floating...really neat! Come to think of it, though, the guy on the left looks like he's holding a bottle of beer...Radical Ed? LOL

It's just a fellow explorer walking in front of my camera with the shutter open for a long time... I think it came out kinda neat with the billowing curtain.

Glad to have livened up your classwork! I'm always amazed at how these incredible places were built in the middle of nowhere (back then); they are truly unspoken gems of architecture. They were beautiful for the people living and working inside almost every day, not for some millionaire... it makes you wish you had something better than a cubicle inside a bigger box in some corporate industrial park.

Thank you Bob, your knowledge is much appreciated along with everyone else's contributions pertaining to their specialties!

http://www.opacity.us/image3019_furnaces.htm
Ah!! now it all comes together.

This is a control for a moving grate coal bed.
This feeds coal at a set rate for proper and efficient burning.

Mr Motts, could you explain what it is? It really does look like a ghost, but if you think about it, it just looks like sunlight coming into the hallway.

http://www.opacity.us/image3019.htm

This looks like the coal hopper for the boiler firebox.
The controls probably control the amount of coal put onto the coalbed to keep it even and level.
The patched over opening above are sight portholes for visually inspecting the coalbed and flame.

Honestly motts, some of us old ladies have bad hearts. Like me.................scared the shit out of me, until i read the comment, lol.

http://www.opacity.us/...e3060_fire_alarm.htm

This gives it some perspective.

Hey Motts, i just found this site after doing a search on Richardsonian gothic revival style buildings for a Modern architecture art history class I am taking. I am 34 and just went back to finish my degree and take the last few credits i needed. I was kind of bored by the class but finding your site has really helped! I did a paper on the Buffalo State Hospital and it turned out quite well. I turned my professor on to your site also as i was betting he'd really dig it. I am also really interested in the asylums as i work in a group home for the mentally disabled. The group home is basically the more politically correct replacement for these institutions.

I'm using a pc and the effect worked just as Lynne stated, quite cool!

It's light coming in from the other side of the refrigerator... the backside opens up into the autopsy room.

Just tipped over, although it does look like it was "ejected" from above!

It does look rather small, but I'm invisioning the two lines near the top of the door are about chair-rail height, maybe?

Anyways, this must have really played with the residents' minds...I mean sure they could have been told what they were for but its just weird. Even a perfectly sane person would get a little disturbed with tiny small doors all over the place. Red potion or blue potion? ( I think, right? "Alice in Wonderland," eh, eh?)

Yes, good thing you stopped dead in your tracks....

See, this is what worries me when people go to these places and do drugs and drink...you really need to be fully alert and on your toes at all times to avoid sudden death or serious injury in these places...even completely sober you're still in a lot of danger. Especially younger kids that have no clue about these places to begin with.