Customer Reviews

Asylum: Inside the Closed World of State Mental Hospitals

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I'd been looking forward to Christopher Payne's new book, as I've long had a copy of his book on the forgotten subway power substations.

His new book "Asylum" is even richer than the previous book, as it captures the mood of many of these abandoned mental hospitals. I especially like the interior shots of hallways, treatment areas and especially the behind the scenes shots of boiler rooms,work shops and storage areas.

The exterior shots of many of the hospitals built before 1900 give a glimpse of a whole other approach to the treatment of people in trouble. Many of the buildings look more like resorts and reflect a model of the hospital as a positive place to get away from the pressures of life.

Payne was blessed with access to many of these unused buildings and is further blessed with an eye that sees much and captures it on photos.

I came to "Asylum: Inside the Closed World of State Mental Hospitals" having interpreted "closed" figuratively (i.e. private; inaccessible to the general public). But Christopher Payne intends the word literally here, in this photographic tour of state psychiatric hospitals that have ceased operation and fallen into ruin.

In an introductory essay, neurologist Oliver Sacks discusses asylums as the self-supporting, castle-like sanctuaries they began as in the late 1800s, rather than the wretched places of confinement most grew to be by the mid-1900s. Photographer Christopher Payne laments similarly in his essay: "Sadly, few Americans realize that these institutions were once monuments to civic pride, built with noble intentions by leading architects and physicians who envisioned the asylums as places of refuge, therapy, and healing."

Those essays are followed by nearly 200 full-page photographs (black and white, color) showing the decayed remains of numerous hospitals in dozens of states -- their architecture, grounds, interiors, equipment, and patients' personal effects. Payne returns in an Afterword to describe how this book came to be, and how it felt, over weeks, to watch the demolition of one state hospital that held ties to his childhood.

My only quibbles were that I was confused by frequent blank pages (as though photographs had been removed at the last minute), and I longed for an index. Otherwise, this is a lovely, albeit melancholy, book, and a moving homage to state hospitals.

This collection of photographs contains an illuminating forward by Oliver Sachs and beautiful, melancholy views of historically significant architecture that should have been preserved. There's also an interesting section at the end about the tragic destruction of Danvers State Hospital in Boston, the magnificent building that first piqued my interest in this subject. I look forward to seeing more from this photographer.

This book is haunting and fascinating. The photography is beautiful; and the forward is very interesting, giving much detail as to the rise and fall of the asylum in our American history. This book is everything I hoped it would be. I've spent hours perusing its pages.

"Asylum" is not a book of words as much as it is a book of images. A photo-essay, others have called it. And the pictures definitely tell a story.

"Asylum" contains haunting and classical views of 19th century Kirkbride-plan mental hospitals. The old asylums were closed-off worlds complete with greenhouses, sewing rooms, craft shops, small theaters, even bowling alleys, to occupy and entertain the patient-residents. The hospitals were completely staffed and stocked for nearly every medical contingency. They had the all the facilities and devices of 20th century psychiatric care including: straitjackets, ice showers, immersion tanks, ECT units, and one would imagine, lobotomies, for the 'treatment resistant'.

Entire communities and cultures existed inside those red brick buildings, with their white painted trim around doors and windows, and everything inside painted institutional green. In the old days, thousands of patients lived out their adult lives in these State asylums, with diagnoses like: 'undifferentiated depression' and 'dementia praecox', and were even buried on the premises after they had expired.

This book really brought back some memories. I once lived as a teenager in a residential treatment facility on the grounds of Concord Hospital (originally called: "New Hampshire State Asylum") which is depicted a few times in the book (p45, 47, 143). Looking at the photos of the different institutions in this book, I saw my old room, my old bed, the basement tunnels, the bathrooms we showered in, the chairs we sat in during group, the windows I used to look out of...

On page 201 is a photo taken of a melancholic but poignant poem written by an unknown and unattributed patient on a basement wall of Augusta State Hospital in Augusta, Maine, a portion of which reads:

"I wish that some of these people, who write the books and make the rules, could spend just a few years walking in our shoes."

Low on written content but high on visual and emotional impact, "Asylum: Inside the Closed World of State Mental Hospitals" by Christopher Payne is a dreary, lovely and reverent look inside the dimly-lit underworld of State Mental Hospitals.

Jane Alexander, author
Possessing Me: A Memoir of Healing

A haunting, painful book to read. The extraordinary photographs complementary to the text offer a contextual glimpse into mental hospitals, which honorably began as "asylums." The deplorable decline that transformed such havens into virtual prisons utilized to experiment with and medicate its patients into submission is very different from its dignified beginnings. For those who found daily life overwhelming, it was an accessible, inviolable refuge and a peaceful shelter. A safe sanctuary, which brought to mind a line in Yeats' poem (The Stolen Child), "...for the world's more full of weeping than you can understand..."

I especially appreciated this book because I was raised on the grounds of a state mental institution. I took for granted something that made such places unique. They were small cities unto themselves with farms, utility plants, fire departments and all the other kinds of services which made them mostly self-sufficient.

This book acknowledges the blessings and curses of such institutions, and there were both. It is an important memory of an often-forgotten part of the nation's history.

At first I was really surprised at the size of this book, it was larger than I had expected, especially for the price. It is well constructed and put together very nicely. It is mainly a photography book, so don't expect tons of history about the buildings, but he does have enough info. to give someone the basics on asylums. One part I like especially was at the beginning he has quite a few historical postcards and photos of asylums. The next 95% of the book is his photographic essay that is presented in a way that gives the reader a nice overview of a typical asylum using photos from 50-70 different individual asylums. He does a great job at capturing both the rich history as well as the more recent neglect of these great buildings.

"Asylum" is a fascinating coffee table book of now-abandoned mental hospitals. It's not the usual coffee table book with mouthwatering food or colorful scenic vistas. "Asylum" evokes a bygone age. In the 19th century, mental hospitals were seen as having a salvific mission--they'd be places for refuge, exercise, and therapy. By the following century, they were drab, depressing places where patients were routinely mistreated. Now, many of these buildings are empty shells. The places LOOK haunted. There are mental hospitals that still have the unclaimed ashes of former patients, books on their shelves, artwork on the walls.

"Asylum" shows that mental hospitals used to issue their own postcards, have their own farms. Napa State Hospital was once a stately gothic structure--now it's a set of dreary modern buildings. The book chronicles the destruction of the Danvers Mental Hospital in Massachusetts as well. The now-abandoned gothic building of the asylum in Worcester, Massachusetts struck an eerie chord. I knew a professor who said he had gone there as a child because of his lack of emotions. The Worcester asylum looks like the setting of a horror movie (it was also the only mental institution Sigmund Freud visited when he came to the US in 1909).

"Asylum" has an introduction by psychologist Oliver Sacks. It's a superb, fascinating, poignant and subtly chilling coffee table book.

Great pictures but I wish there were more stories woven into them.... basically a coffee table photo book.