Richardson Olmsted Complex
The Richardson Olmsted Campus in Buffalo, New York, United States, was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1986. The site was designed by the American architect Henry Hobson Richardson in concert with the famed landscape team of Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux in the late 1800s, incorporating a system of treatment for people with mental illness developed by Dr. Thomas Story Kirkbride known as the Kirkbride Plan. Over the years, as mental health treatment changed and resources were diverted, the buildings and grounds began a slow deterioration. By 1974, the last patients were removed from the historic wards. On June 24, 1986, the former Buffalo State Asylum for the Insane was added to the National Historic Landmark registry. In 2006, the Richardson Center Corporation was formed to restore the buildings.
Today, the Richardson Olmsted Campus is being converted, beginning with the now open Hotel Richardson within the Towers Building and two flanking buildings.
Future plans for the site include the construction of a new museum in Buffalo's cultural corridor, known as the Lipsey Architecture Center Buffalo. The museum will focus on the city's rich architectural history and collection of now-preserved buildings.
History
In 1865, Senator Asher P. Nichols introduced a bill for additional mental health asylums to be built in New York State, with one dedicated to servicing the western portion of the state.Nichol's request was approved, and towns across Western New York began to enter bids to become the home of the new asylum. Buffalo was chosen from a group of possible locations that included Lockport, Batavia, and Warsaw. The City of Buffalo promised to supply the future asylum with 100 years of free drinking water, and its location in a rural setting close to a bustling downtown was ideal for the Kirkbride Plan. Kirkbride had called for a patient population of around 300, but Buffalo physician Dr. John P. Gray, increased that number to about 600.
The large Medina red sandstone and brick hospital buildings were designed in 1870 in the Kirkbride Plan by architect Henry Hobson Richardson, and the grounds were designed by landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted.
Construction started in 1871, with the cornerstone being placed the following year in 1872. On November 15, 1880, the Buffalo State Asylum for the Insane admitted patients for the first time, although only the eastern wards had been completed.
In 1889, New York State approved funding for the remainder of the asylum to be constructed. H.H. Richardson had died in 1886, so architects Green and Wicks, and William W. Carlin finished the project. Certain elements changed, but the new architects attempted to emulate Richardson's distinct style for the remainder of the asylum.
The next year in 1890, the Buffalo State Asylum for the Insane changed its name to the Buffalo State Hospital. That same year, New York passed new legislation establishing mental health treatment as the state's responsibility. A facility built for around 600, soon became overcrowded.
The remainder of the western wards were finished in 1895. Patients were now segregated by sex, with women in the western wings and men in the eastern wings.
In 1918, Richardson's iconic towers that were covered in clay-tile roofing, were re-covered in copper.
The 100 acre farm that existed on site and was once used for agricultural therapy was sold by New York State in 1927 to Buffalo State University. This decreased the campus's size from 203 acres, to around 100. Six years later in 1933, part of the Olmsted-designed green space, was paved over to create a parking lot.
In the early 1960s, three male wards are demolished to make room for a modern rehabilitation center. The Strozzi Building was completed in 1964, essentially marking the final decline of the original asylum.
In 1973, the Asylum was added to the National Register of Historic Places.
The last patients were moved out of the original asylum wards in 1974.
In 1986, it was designated as a National Historic Landmark.
The towers building remained open as office space until 1990. Afterwards, the Richardson-designed structure sat unoccupied and decaying for almost twenty years. In 2006, the Richardson Center Corporation, a non-profit dedicated to the preservation of the campus, gained control of the property and completed initial stabilization.
Architecture
The man selected to design the Buffalo State Asylum in May 1870, was Henry Hobson Richardson. Although born on a plantation near New Orleans, he was an 1858 graduate of Harvard College. From there attended the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Afterwards, he started working as a draftsman in an architectural firm in France.In New York City after returning from France, he became acquainted with Frederick Law Olmsted. They were neighbors on Staten Island, had offices near one another on Broadway, and the two had similar artistic tastes. When Olmsted was invited to Buffalo in 1869 to design a park for the city, he met with some of the city’s leading citizens. Among them was William Dorsheimer, a successful lawyer, who asked Olmsted to recommend an architect to design a new house for Dorsheimer. Olmsted recommended Richardson, and the house he designed for Dorsheimer still stands at 438 Delaware Avenue.
Dorsheimer would later chair the ten member committee assigned to select the asylum’s architect. Based on Dorsheimer’s experience with him, he directed the committee in its meeting of May 1870, to hire Richardson.
The Buffalo State Asylum for the Insane, the largest commission of Richardson's career, marked the advent of his characteristic Romanesque Revival style. When emulated by later architects, this style is referred to as Richardsonian Romanesque. It has been the subject of a long-term preservation campaign. Nevertheless, three pavilions on the east side were demolished in the 1970s to make way for newer psychiatric facilities. In 1927, the northern farmlands were transferred back to the State for the development of what is today Buffalo State College.
Architectural plans and drawings are in the H.H. Richardson Collection in the Houghton Library at Harvard University.
Olmsted and landscape design
Plans for the asylum grounds were created in about 1870 by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, the partners who had designed Central Park in Manhattan and Prospect Park in Brooklyn. However, before they were implemented, the plans were lost and the partnership broke up. Olmsted then created another plan, and a partial record of which still exists today.This plan shows the southeast corner of the front of the asylum, that is, the land south of the administrative building to Forest Avenue and everything east to Elmwood Avenue. On this ground was laid out an entrance road that looped from Forest Avenue to the front of the administration building and a large curving path in front of the east wing of the hospital in the angle of Forest and Elmwood Avenues. More paths ran in front of the hospital wing. A sunken carriage path was also intended in the southeast corner of the property, but this was never constructed.
On this ground, Olmsted’s plan called for the planting of 150 trees, and up to 2000 shrubs. Except in the far southeast corner, the trees were spaced well apart and created an almost forest-like environment. Early photos suggest Olmsted let trees that were already growing on the site remain. The trees and shrubs were selected for contrasting shapes, sizes, and leaf appearance. The overall intent was to create what was termed a “pastoral landscape”, and it was Olmsted’s intent that this open landscape allow the public to see onto the property and the buildings themselves, and for the patients to clearly see the outer world during their walks on the grounds and through their windows.
Today, all that remains of Olmsted’s plantings are two Swamp White Oaks that stand directly in front of the administrative building and a huge White Ash that stands near the property’s fence line along Forest Avenue. Until 2019, an original Silver Maple also stood in front of the east wing of the Buffalo Psychiatric Center property.
Mental health treatment in early America
Now seen in a negative light by some, at the time mental health asylums were a revolutionary concept and a huge step forward in care for the mentally ill. Many asylums placed an emphasis not only on medical practices, but on architecture and design as well. Living at an asylum was not meant to only impact mental health issues, but to cure them. Before this movement, the mentally ill were often housed in almshouses and jails, and were often subjected to archaic practices like bloodletting, isolation, and restraintment.The first hospital to focus solely on mental health opened in 1773 in Williamsburg, Virginia and was known as the Eastern State Hospital. In the early parts of the 19th century, more mental hospitals were established across the United States including McLean Hospital in Boston, Friend’s Asylum in Philadelphia, and the Hartford Retreat for the Insane in Connecticut. While undoubtedly influenced by the treatment of the mentally ill in Europe, some historians believe that asylums in America grew out of the Jacksonian Era. This period was marked by financial fluctuation, social change, and growing interconnectivity, and historians believe the need for “order” saw with it an increased need for asylums.
The need to create livable places to house the mentally ill became apparent by the mid-19th century. Reformers like Dorothea Dix began to push for more funding and legislation aimed at creating mental health asylums across the United States. Dix travelled across both the United States and Europe, advocating for the importance of asylums and bringing the issue to the forefront of the American consciousness. Perhaps her greatest contribution to the effort, was the proposed Bill for the Benefit of the Indigent Insane. Later struck down by President Franklin Pierce, this bill would have set aside ten million acres of federal land for the construction of mental health facilities. Dix may have been unsuccessful, but her efforts directly correlated to the construction of 32 mental health hospitals across the United States.
At the conclusion of the American Civil War in 1865, a renewed focus on the construction of mental health facilities swept across America.