4,081 Comments for Norwich State Hospital

One Step...Beyond

Note to self:
Must set a rubbish fire in living room to complete the patina once paint has dried to a tacky touch.

Sure, and I am pretty mindful about where I step nowadays. Being at Byberry a day before the inspector plummeted to his death in a stairwell, and almost doing the same in an old rotted Kirkbride were big eye openers.

I have to repaint the living room soon.

I would love this patina.

Sweet title there Mr Motts.

No I didn't take it, I left it in the room; although I would bet someone else had grabbed it by now.

Just some flashlights!

"how can you people even speak like this... were you actually in here? i just cant see what is so beautiful about being locked up in some kind of hell hole, if you will. i dont see any beauty in locking real; people up in conditions like this...please fill me in on how you percieve the world because this is no kind of "beauty" to me!!!!!!!!!!!"

The beauty is the building, not what the building housed. The beauty is in Motts' photography and his ability to capture decay and catalog the architectural wonders of these places before they are gone. No one ever said being "locked up in a hell hole" is beautiful.

Evil is not emanated from a building. Evil emanates from the thoughts and actions of the people inhabiting it. Once those people have left, the building itself is no more evil than the moon and stars that gaze down upon the construction night after night. The evil moves on with the people who create it.

These old mental hospitals are places of beauty and sadness, memories and lessons. Evil may have existed in one form or another within the walls of these glorious old manses, but truly, evil exists wherever man does. One can't fairly call the old hospitals evil. Nor can we assume that all activity that once occurred there was evil - there were, and are, and always will be, the basic intention of helping those in need when it comes to the creation of institutions and hospitals. Singular acts of evil should not be allowed to define the entire enterprise, either then or now.

That is an ENORMOUS urinal. I think you'd have to be lying down to miss that sucker, no matter how bad your aim.

"Now these patients didn't even no how to brush there teeth. If u ride threw the town of Norwich u will see the homeless out there sleeping under the bridges."

Kinda like "u" don't know how to spell?

Coincidentally, there are a fair number of homeless sleeping under bridges in my area, too, but firstly, they aren't all mentally ill and secondly, there's no shuttered psychiatric institution to blame around here. De-institutionalizing mental health-care meant a lot of people were deemed well enough to function in outpatient settings, yet later these people may have reverted to a more non-functional state, eventually ending up homeless or destitute. It's a sad side-effect of the reversal from the way mental disorders used to be treated and unavoidable due to lack of public funding.

It doesn't mean patients who could not even handle basic hygiene were just booted out onto the streets from one day to the next.

Over three years later, I'm still giggling at the whole whitehawk/blackhawk narrative. That sh*t is HILARIOUS (at least if you're trying to be taken seriously)! Cattle prods and ovary-removals? Bahahahaha!

Honestly, someone should have been into short fiction rather than website commentary. It's pretty rough around the edges, but creative enough to be the basis for an interesting short story.

man, would I love to have read this -

I imagine in it's day, this room was pretty nice. I wouldn't have minded having this room, nice windows to look out, a nice warm radiator by the foot of the bed to keep your feet warm, a nice stand by the bed to hold your book, drink or whatever. Now to look at it and think of being in that bed, watching the season's passing by through those windows, it seems all too depressing. How one photo can exude such emotion, fantastic.

Snipped from Motts' copied article, posted 6-26-2010:
"Preston hopes to save one structure, the former administration building, and convert it to town offices. But the town wants the building's former eye-catching centerpiece: A grand, tiled fireplace inset with a big, brass Connecticut state medallion. First Selectman Robert Congdon said he has been trying for two years to get the Public Works Department, which may have authorized removal of the fireplace, to tell him where it is."

I guess now we know where it is. Gone... in pieces... possibly destroyed by vandals or even the security guards themselves. Doesn't sound as though the removal was authorized, either, which may be why the Public Works Dept. hasn't told the Selectmen where it is.