By Christina B. Farnsworth
Photos courtesy of Chuck LaChiusa

Perhaps it was the trauma of the Civil War or maybe the dawn of scientific psychiatry, but the 1870s were America's glory years of grand, expansive asylums. In stark contrast to the historic Colonial habit of imprisoning the "crazies," these refuges for the unbalanced were conceived and constructed as monuments to society's compassion. Who better to express the wealth, strength and progressive wisdom of the Empire State than America's grand master of stone, architect Henry Hobson Richardson?

Today, little more than a century after Richardson's Buffalo State Asylum for the Insane, now the Buffalo Psychiatric Center, became the international benchmark of health care architecture, states no longer take pride in treating the mentally ill. The building itself, now nearly empty, inspires "spooky photo" Web sites, and few realize that Richardson, then a hotshot 24-year-old, established a new American architecture in the local Medina sandstone. Fewer still realize that this sprawling, rough-hewn, 360,000-square-foot stone edifice was originally celebrated as Modern Architecture and the epitome of building technology.

Richardson spent the Civil War studying in Europe as the second U.S. student ever accepted to the prestigious L'Ecole Des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Medieval Romanesque 11th- and 12th-century stonework in the English Norman style entranced him. Inspired by the vocabulary of stone columns, arches and carving, Richardson introduced the style that still bears his name: Richardson Romanesque. Rugged stone arches, strong horizontal lines and design symmetry now synonymous with city halls and county courthouses as well as homes were originally his unique hallmarks.

In 1864, Dr. James White proposed a modern asylum for Buffalo. Following the humanitarian tenets of Dr. Thomas Kirkbride, each of 600 patients, grouped by diagnosis and illness severity, would have a private room in an interconnecting pavilion. Kirkbride's insistence on iron fire doors was one design feature that advanced building standards. The complex featured indoor plumbing at a time when most private residences sported outhouses. Kirkbride's therapies included gardens designed to be soothing and therapeutic. Patient gardeners produced the hospital's fruits and vegetables and sold the surplus at market. Thomas Hurd, an early historian of American mental institutions, admired the Buffalo complex as the grandest architectural expression of the Kirkbride system, and former U.S. President Millard Fillmore attended the Masonic groundbreaking ceremonies in June 1871.

Built with local, reddish-colored Grimsby Medina sandstone, Richardson conceived the hospital as a place of holistic healing with 10 connected pavilions, five each on either side of a monumental administration building. Some have compared the design's plan to the V-formation of a flock of geese in flight. It was the largest project of his career, taking nearly a quarter century to complete, and he had been dead and buried for nine years before it was done.

The most prominent elements of the four-story central building are its identical twin towers. Three-quarters of Richardson's designs incorporate a tower, but the Asylum is one of the very few — only 15 percent, to be exact — designed with multiple towers. Each is 185-feet tall with four corner turrets and steep copper roofs punctuated with dormers. The towers were never finished inside, nor intended to be used for any particular function except their striking exterior design.

A neighbor of Richardson, Frederick Law Olmstead and his partner Calvert Vaux designed the 200-acre landscape. Best known for New York's Central Park, the pair designed the grounds to complement the building's architecture and orchestrated the landscape to visually focus attention to the towers.

Though only half completed, the first patients entered the hospital in 1880. Now, listed as both a National Register of Historic Places site (and on that organization's list of 11 most endangered buildings) and a National Historic Landmark, it survives but does not thrive. Three pavilions built in brick as an economy measure were demolished in 1969. The hospital closed as a residential treatment facility in 1974.

The stone exteriors are still an inspiring example of Richardson's design and the masons' art. Sadly, today the complex is only partially used, and much of Olmsted and Vaux's renowned therapeutic gardens are parking lots. Though the slate roof is now asphalt, the stone repointed and the towers illuminated, this beautiful and legally protected stone edifice seeks new purpose. New York State funded $80 million for rehab and restoration but has so far spent only $1 million, according to Tim Tielman, executive director of the Campaign for Buffalo History, Architecture and Culture.

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