Northampton State Hospital

About this property

Northampton State Hospital was a historic psychiatric hospital at 1 Prince Street on top of Hospital Hill outside of Northampton, Massachusetts. The hospital building was constructed in 1856. It operated until 1993, and the building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1994. Construction of the State Hospital at Northampton, the third state institution for the insane in the state of Massachusetts began on March 15, 1856, on top of Hospital Hill outside of Northampton, Massachusetts. The hospital was originally known as the Northampton Lunatic Asylum. On July 4 (United States Independence Day) of the same year the cornerstone was laid. For posterity, a time capsule was embedded within the cornerstone, where it would lie undisturbed on top of Hospital Hill for 150 years. The hospital consisted of Old Main (the original Kirkbride hospital building), and infirmaries, staff dormitories, a work farm, and other buildings including a brand new memorial complex which was established later. The asylum received its first patients on August 16, 1858. Within six weeks, the population would reach 220, most of whom were transfers from other institutions long overwhelmed. The original design specified a maximum of 200 patients, but this limit was raised to 250 by the statewide hospital Commissioners before the asylum opened. After only two months the Board of Trustees speculated that the limit could be raised to 300 patients. As the patient population accelerated, the wards of Old Main were built onto so much that its original design looked nothing like its new shape. Soon, the population grew so much that several new infirmaries had to be built to sustain the patients. The first superintendent, Dr. William Henry Prince, resigned in 1864, and Dr. Pliny Earle was selected as his replacement. Dr. Earle immediately began to cultivate a strong work therapy program by expanding the farm, constructing a greenhouse as well as other service-oriented buildings. When he retired in 1885, Dr. Earle was given an apartment within the asylum out of gratitude for his twenty-one years of service. The population had reached 476 patients. The start of the 20th century was marked with a change in name from the State Hospital at Northampton to the Northampton Insane Hospital, and two years later to Northampton State Hospital. Northampton State Hospital, under superintendent John A. Houston, continued constructing buildings such as large infirmary wards built on either end of the hospital in 1902 and 1903. In 1907, the same year Bishop's Crook lamps were installed around the hospital grounds, “A Mind That Found Itself” was published. In it Clifford W. Beers, a former patient of several institutions, argues that contrary to what the public had been led to believe, no one knew how to cure insanity. That year the population at Northampton stood at 726 patients.

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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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