4,081 Comments for Norwich State Hospital

This Utica crib... BINGO! It's still used by people who "horde" children today. These are used by the people we read about that chain children to beds or place them in cages so they won't wander away. People foster or adopt kids or are given special needs children by people who have adopted them and find they can not care for them. We've read of plenty of cases like this recently.

Thiese were most certainly NOT used in the poultry industry.

I'll say this about Utopia...they do want to preserve the oldest buildings (this one, the main administration, Awl (which is a mirror image of salmon) and a couple more. While the thought of an amusment park seems unbelievable - especially since there is a separate jewish cemetary that runs onto the camps - i hope something does happen so these buildings won't decay any further.

There is a very good chance that this is some kind of bakery piece, because they did bake their own bread at the hospital (which from what I hear was better than any other bakery in town) and they did have a farm, up until the 1950s.

Indeed, that is the Conn. State seal and the three-word motto is the state saying (is that the word?)

Something else, which NSH employees may remember...the two oak trees are also symbolic in that there is a gigantic oak tree on the campus...kind of hidden, it's not on the main campus...that was well-known on the campus. The former superintendent, Garrell Mullaney (now CEO of Conn. Valley Hospital in Middletown) would give ceramic tiles of this tree to employees when they reached like 10-, 20- or 30-year milestones with the hospital.

as i posted on another page, my relative was a nursing supervisor and worked for a time in this building. She said there were guards at almost every entrance, and she carried about 75 keys with her...one for every mesh door. You had to open one, lock it behind you, walk to the next, open it, lock it, continue. When she dispensed meds, a security guard had to be with her at all times.

If there were visitors, they had to speak through the mesh. No physical contact whatsoever.

I had an relative who was a nursing supervisor at norwich for 30 years years.

Salmon was for the criminally insane. Every window on the outside has cast iron bars in front of them. This building was used until 1972, when patients were transferred to Whiting Forensic at Connecticut Valley Hospital (which is still open today). Like most, it was just emptied after the patients moved and left in the same condition it is today.

She said heavy, four-inch thick oak doors were in this building. One time, she was walking past a room and heard a "zzzzzzip" go past her. One of the patients had made a makeshift shooter and fired some kind of metal that went through the door!

So this IS a mental institution right?
You'd NEVER expect to see such NICE things that are so preserved in an Insane Ayslum......

the bed in the relative clutter-free section under the light gives a strange feeling of hope to this picture. simply lovely.

what a beautiful building! (love the near-security run-in story!)

Thanks X, I understand the feeling of being safe somewhere, I have times where I will stay in my house for weeks, no outside contact, no school, phone unplugged, all that good stuff.

Dixmont and all the other old beautiful buildings still seem alive to me. But one day they will disappear, to bad.

Lynne, it's so heartening to have a seer of the truth. I hope one day you run for office, I'd be the first to vote for you. Keep up the good work girl.

My goodness, a replica of an old English medeviel manse fireplace going back to the tudor era. My guess it was never functional and wasn't built to be so. It's so grand, I just can't figure out what it symbolized. Is it that one was entering a castle , a warm enviorment inviting in the lost souls the times? The workmanship is impressive, but ask youselves, what the hell was it for. Feedback be good.

It had class, it had quality, it had imagination, workmanship. It wasn't because they just needed to whip up a warhouse for the retarded or the mentally ill. There was forethought and an idea that they had at the time. To maintain the dignity of the charges who were entering such an unknown. The marble, the glass, big time class and quality.

Well done pic. One can picture the newly weds decending the grand staircase.