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Featured Article Of The Week
Hudson County Hospital for the Insane
The Hudson County Hospital for the Insane was located on what was then called Snake Hill, now Laurel Hill, which was a large igneous rock formation jutting some 150 feet from the floor of the otherwise flat swamps of the New Jersey "Meadowlands". Snake Hill first housed the counties Penitentiary and Almshouse, where the county's insane were maintained from their creation in 1863 until the construction of an independent Asylum Institution in 1894. This new building was located adjacent to the almshouse and was built originally for 250 patients.
The design consisted of a central administration building flanked on either side by a male and female wing which began as a single ward building each and connected to the administration via connecting "bridges". This building was four stories tall and 552 feet long and 8- feet wide. In 1916 it was recorded by the American Medico-Psychological Association; Committee on a History of the Institutional Care of the Insane, that a new wing on the male side was being constructed with modern treatment apparatus and planned was a similar expansion to the female side. The administration housed apartments for the superintendent as well as the hospitals offices.
As was the standard procedure at the time the county asylum provided housing for the chronic insane of the county, providing custodial care rather than real treatment. The acute cases and those deemed curable were sent to the State Insane Hospitals such as Trenton State Hospital or Greystone Park State Hospital. Click here for more...
