4,537 Comments for Pennhurst State School

HA! you took the word right out of my mouth Motts!

We sat in chairs like that at my Infant school!

Lets do some pranks with that number!

Hey Chris would you call me at 785-650-3800. I would like to talk to you about the green thing that goes with this machine. Thanks.

Heh, I took a very short trip back there and snuck these on to the end of this gallery.

and just how in theeee hell did i miss this picture?

BS Marcia - stand back! I'll protect you!

Those lights have a very creepy, skeletal look to them. I was fascinated by them, and almost fell a few times because of the distraction!

I"m in the first band that will use pictures of Pennhurst on the album! It's perfect!

I've been in that room with all the medication bottles. It's sooo freaky!! I tried to open that door as well, and I was also very curious as to what could be behind the door, but I'd never dare trash the door. Pennhurst is way too beautiful to damage. Has anybody been in the morgue?? It's in a house sized building near the dietary, and it goes back sooo far. The room is really small, and there's 3 body freezers in the room. You get the weirdest feeling in that room.

These tunnels are underground, and branch off throughout the entire campus. They were an easy way to get the handicapped children to and from diffrent buildings. The reason there is no light or windows, is because usually the children (Patients) that needed the tunnels, were deeply sadned by the outside world they couldn't live in, so they were taken throught the tunnels. There is also a smaller series of tunnels underneath the patient tunnels.

The fact that the buildings were designed and built so beautifully, with a great deal of attention to detail, large windows, spacious hallways, porches, bow windows, etc., seem to me that the original intent of this instution, and perhaps others like it, were really designed and intended to provide a better environment to those who would otherwise be totally neglected by their parents and society in general.

Unfortunately, the lack of understanding by doctors and government agencies about the natuar and treatment of the patients "differences", as well as underfunding and overcrowding would naturally lead to these othewise attractive buildings becoming the places of sadness indeed.

Just imagine any new facility built within the past 50 years for such a purpose having anything except an army barracks look about it.

Thank you Elizabeth for being the voice of reason. You are absolutely right. Those toys are manufactured with the background scene in place.

Well unless the people exploring this building carry chalk on them at all times, I suspect that the board was manufactured with the road/sky drawn on and the idea was to play with that scene with your car, animal, and maybe people magnets, and you could add to the background by drawing birds, exhaust smoke, bikes, etc. etc with chalk. Either that or a staff member drew the picture on with a china pencil/white pencil crayon. Those things do not easily rub off chalkboards. My school teachers had chalkboards that they drew horizontal lines across with white or blue pencilcrayon, like lined paper, as a guide for learning to print letters evenly. You could wipe off your writing after but the lines remained. However, because of the presence of the car and dog magnets, I think the image was likely manufactured on and then you could add to it, erase, and add something different.

I don't know, but unless these stairs were bolted to the wall there, I'd suspect they were moveable for access rather than therapy. Maybe a high shelf, or something the nurses or maintainence people needed to reach higher up. They just got left sitting aside in the room. Otherwise, that is an unusual physical therapy stairway.