Difference between revisions of "Portal:Featured Article Of The Week"

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|Title= Brooklyn State Hospital
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|Title= Boston State Hospital
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|Body= The main building of Kings County Lunatic Asylum, located in Flatbush, was funded by Chapter 278 of the Laws of 1852, which authorized Kings County to negotiate a loan for the extension of hospital accommodations for care of the insane in connection with its almshouse. A further authorization, made by Chapter 255 of the Laws of 1853, provided for a loan to complete the institution under construction. This amount proved insufficient and an additional loan was authorized by Chapter 927 of the Laws of 1855.
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|Body= The Boston State Hospital – originally called the Boston Lunatic Asylum – was founded in South Boston in 1839. By the 1880s, new ideas about the care of the mentally ill emphasized the importance of fresh air, hard work, and separation from the adverse influences (both social and environmental) of city life, an approach that was referred to as “moral treatment.” Thus, when the time came to move out of the old and overcrowded facilities in South Boston, the Asylum’s leaders looked to West Roxbury – at that time a semi-rural area that had only recently been incorporated into the city of Boston – as an appropriate setting for a new hospital.
  
The building as originally planned was to consist of an administration building and four wings, but when it opened only two wings had been erected. The institution received its first patients in April 1854; by the end of the first month of operation it was caring for 178 patients. The demand for more room for patients necessitated an enlargement, and four additional wings were built, two on either side of the original main building. The first two were occupied by patients on June 1, 1861, and the latter two on July 1, 1869. To make room for more patients, a building originally erected on the almshouse grounds as a nursery was remodeled for asylum use; 267 patients were subsequently transferred there. Known as the "Hospital for Incurables," it functioned as a separate institution until May 1884, when it became part of the main asylum.  [[Brooklyn State Hospital|Click here for more...]]
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Beginning in 1884, some Asylum residents were moved to the former almshouse at Austin Farm, just across Morton Street from the present Boston Nature Center, where the Harvard Commons development stands today. In 1892, looking for more room for both buildings and farmland, the City purchased the 35-acre Pierce Farm, along Walk Hill and Canterbury Streets – part of which land is now the western end of the BNC. A few years later, the City bought another parcel of land, adjoining Pierce Farm and Canterbury Street, which now includes much of the Clark Cooper Community Gardens and other areas in the central part of the BNC.
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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.  [[Boston State Hospital|Click here for more...]]
 
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Revision as of 04:21, 25 September 2022

Featured Article Of The Week

Boston State Hospital


BostonSH.png

The Boston State Hospital – originally called the Boston Lunatic Asylum – was founded in South Boston in 1839. By the 1880s, new ideas about the care of the mentally ill emphasized the importance of fresh air, hard work, and separation from the adverse influences (both social and environmental) of city life, an approach that was referred to as “moral treatment.” Thus, when the time came to move out of the old and overcrowded facilities in South Boston, the Asylum’s leaders looked to West Roxbury – at that time a semi-rural area that had only recently been incorporated into the city of Boston – as an appropriate setting for a new hospital.

Beginning in 1884, some Asylum residents were moved to the former almshouse at Austin Farm, just across Morton Street from the present Boston Nature Center, where the Harvard Commons development stands today. In 1892, looking for more room for both buildings and farmland, the City purchased the 35-acre Pierce Farm, along Walk Hill and Canterbury Streets – part of which land is now the western end of the BNC. A few years later, the City bought another parcel of land, adjoining Pierce Farm and Canterbury Street, which now includes much of the Clark Cooper Community Gardens and other areas in the central part of the BNC.

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. Click here for more...