Editing Boston State Hospital

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It was soon decided that Austin Farm would house women, while Pierce Farm became the “Department for Men” of the recently renamed Boston Insane Hospital. The new buildings at Pierce Farm, designed by city architect Edmund March Wheelwright, opened in 1895, and a few additional farm buildings were added over the following years.
 
It was soon decided that Austin Farm would house women, while Pierce Farm became the “Department for Men” of the recently renamed Boston Insane Hospital. The new buildings at Pierce Farm, designed by city architect Edmund March Wheelwright, opened in 1895, and a few additional farm buildings were added over the following years.
 
In 1908, the city sold the buildings and 153 acres of land to the state for one million dollars, and the facility was renamed the Boston State Hospital. Hospital trustees envisioned a grand expansion scheme, published in the 1919 Annual Report, to fully develop the hospital to a maximum capacity of 5000 patients. This scheme was never fully realized, due primarily to the State Board of Insanity's position that no facility for the mentally ill should house more than 2000 patients. Construction of the Metropolitan state Hospital in Haltham in 1930 "led to a much reduced and seemingly haphazard building program" at Boston State.
 
 
Expansion at the hospital temporarily halted in 1920, and resumed with the construction of a number of buildings under public work projects in the 1930s. Most recent construction took place in the late 1960s/early 1970s. The oldest building on hospital property a ca. 1865 farmhouse near Walk Hill Street, burned and was subsequently razed in the winter of 1989.
 
  
 
In 1951 the resident population of the hospital hit an all-time high of 3,100, about 30% over the institution’s official capacity. The facility had
 
In 1951 the resident population of the hospital hit an all-time high of 3,100, about 30% over the institution’s official capacity. The facility had

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