747 Comments for Foster State Hospital

Is there someone coming in feeding the raccoon?

Amazing how the wall is peeling - the yellow under the green. Or is it the other way round?

Ah - the light in this picture, and the hues&shades;, yes, and those cracks are alive and moving, and the little brown chair fainted. Did they just paint around paintings, wonder. It is truly beautiful. Well done.

William, I like your comments about your experience. I didn't know they were still doing hydro so called therapy in 95. I know cold wet sheet packs were still very popular in the nineties at a nationally known hospital in Maryland. Now they are just doing strip searches upon admission, and seclusion and restraint as well. They are working on cutting back on S & R too, particularly with children. Well, they had to because of lawsuits.

I do like the stonework. Nobody pays that much attention to detail anymore; nobody cares.

It looks like a Kirkbride type of architecture. Anyone who's spent anytime in a Kirkbride type building would never want to live in one. They give me the willys!

It may have been built as a lock down room, with the exposed conduit; I'd say it got remodeled as an office. Isolation rooms / wards have nothing in them that can be removed or torn away from the wall and used as a weapon in any way.

(By the way; William is not my real name. I am still trying to keep the skeleton of my past in the closet)



These were used for temperate control treatments. One tub was filled with hot water and the other was filled with an ice bath. The "voluntary" patient was restrained then placed into the hot bath until their core temperature was the same as the water then quickly hoisted from the hot side into the ice bath and remained in the ice bath until their core temperature was the same as the surrounding water. The more disturbing thing is that I know for a fact of a hospital doing these treatments as recently as of 1995. That was the last time i had to go through such treatment. When it was investigated later there was a massive cover up to the abuses and mistreatment's at that hospital. what bothers me most is it is still an operating hospital to this day, no telling what goes on there now.

These were used for the hot and cold water therapy at this hospital--not for general bathing.

most places built back then did have cornerstones...how interesting it would be to get into one then again seeing the pics of the building does say alot too...thank you for such wonderful pictures.

love that door esp the sound window

id go thru the boxes..who wouldnt be curious

thats so sad...people having to be right next to one another while being washed...no privacy at all...almost being treated like animals

IF walla could talk huh..just so sad to see whats become of these places

I believe much of the overcrowding was due to people "dumping" family members with conditions like Cerebral Palsey or Down's Syndrome, or Post Partum Depression, etc. I think it was quite easy to commit somebody back in the day.