The standard number of wings for a Kirkbride Plan hospital was eight, with an accommodation of 250 patients. The Kirkbride Plan asylums tended to be large, imposing institutional buildings, with the defining feature being their "narrow, stepped, linear building footprint" featuring staggered wings extending outward from the center, resembling the wingspan of a bat. Design and architectural features įloor plan for the Kirkbride design from an 1854 lithograph The building form itself was meant to have a curative effect, "a special apparatus for the care of lunacy, highly improved and tastefully ornamented." The idea of institutionalization was thus central to Kirkbride's plan for effectively treating the insane. The typical floor plan, with long rambling wings arranged en echelon (staggered, so each connected wing received sunlight and fresh air), was meant to promote privacy and comfort for patients. ![]() ![]() Thomas Story Kirkbride (1809–1883), a psychiatrist from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, developed his requirements of asylum design based on a philosophy of Moral Treatment and environmental determinism. Dix's effort led to the construction of the New Jersey State Lunatic Asylum, the first complete asylum built on the Kirkbride Plan. is partly due to reformer Dorothea Dix, who testified to the New Jersey legislature in 1844, vividly describing the state's treatment of lunatics they were being housed in county jails, private homes, and the basements of public buildings. The establishment of state mental hospitals in the U.S. Thomas Story Kirkbride, creator of the Kirkbride Plan ![]() Numerous Kirkbride structures still exist, though many have been demolished or partially-demolished and repurposed.Īt least 30 of the original Kirkbride buildings have been registered with the National Register of Historic Places in the United States, either directly or through their location on hospital campuses or in historic districts. By the twentieth century, popularity of the design had waned, largely due to the economic pressures of maintaining the immense facilities, as well as contestation of Kirkbride's theories amongst the medical community. Throughout the remainder of the nineteenth century, numerous psychiatric hospitals were designed under the Kirkbride Plan across the United States. The first hospital designed under the Kirkbride Plan was the Trenton State Hospital in Trenton, New Jersey, constructed in 1848. ![]() The hospitals built according to the Kirkbride Plan would adopt various architectural styles, but had in common the "bat wing" style floor plan, housing numerous wings that sprawl outward from the center. The structural features of the hospitals as designated by Kirkbride were contingent on his theories regarding the healing of the mentally ill, in which environment and exposure to natural light and air circulation were crucial. The asylums built in the Kirkbride design, often referred to as Kirkbride Buildings (or simply Kirkbrides), were constructed during the mid-to-late-19th century in the United States. The Kirkbride Plan was a system of mental asylum design advocated by American psychiatrist Thomas Story Kirkbride (1809–1883) in the mid-19th century. 1848 lithograph of the Kirkbride design of the Trenton State Hospital
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