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99% Invisible

373- The Kirkbride Plan

99% Invisible

SiriusXM Podcasts and Roman Mars

Design, Arts

4.827.5K Ratings

🗓️ 8 October 2019

⏱️ 39 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Kirkbrides and the architecture of madness

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

This is 99% invisible. I'm Delaney Hall, filling in for Roman Mars.

0:07.8

Maybe you've heard a story like this, how once upon a time on the outskirts of the town where

0:13.4

someone grew up or where they went to school, on the edge of the woods there was a scary old asylum.

0:20.2

Over the last few years so many people have told me versions of this story.

0:24.7

That's writer Sandy Allen. They wrote a book called A Kind of Miraculous Paradise, about mental

0:31.0

healthcare in America. And often when somebody learns that I write about mental health, they will

0:36.8

launch into their old asylum story, how they used to break into one with their friends or how

0:42.4

someone they knew saw a ghost there, the details vary. But the one detail that almost never varies,

0:49.3

the thing that seems to make an asylum story and asylum story is that the asylum is nearly always

0:56.0

abandoned. The former Buffalo State Asylum for the Insane is an imposing stone structure

1:08.1

on the north side of Buffalo, New York. It's nearly 150 years old and its resident historian Cori

1:15.0

Fabian Barrett recently took me inside. This is pretty much what happens when you leave a building

1:19.6

sit by itself for 40 years. The interior was everything you would expect from an old abandoned

1:25.2

asylum with boarded up windows and long derelict corridors. You've got all the paint crumbling off

1:32.8

the walls. You've got the paint crumbling off of the tin ceiling. Graffiti that says get out now.

1:38.8

Yeah, that's some of the Buffalo State College students from Stannians. All of the doors had been

1:43.4

taken off their hinges. Parts of the building were charred black by fire. Yeah, there have been

1:48.6

many fires here. So this fire actually took place in 1975, right after the patients moved out,

1:54.6

but it didn't take the whole building. Nope, nope. Fire department responded in the nick of time.

1:59.6

Also, these buildings are built like medieval castles. And that's not an exaggeration.

2:06.6

Even though the building was falling apart, it was clear that back in the day, it hadn't just

2:11.6

been imposing, but fancy. The floors had been laid with designer tile imported from England.

...

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