The Grim Story of the Insane Asylum You Can Sleep In: Buffalo State Hospital

Buffalo State Asylum for the Insane shaped American architecture forever. The full story of the building, the geniuses who designed it, and the patients it failed. The man who designed Central Park laid out the grounds. The architect behind it created a style so original it was named after him. Courts, libraries, and train stations across the country still carry the marks of what these two men built together at a psychiatric hospital in Buffalo, New York. The building opened in 1880 as the Buffalo State Asylum for the Insane. It was designed by Henry Hobson Richardson, landscaped by Frederick Law Olmsted, and built on the philosophy of Dr. Thomas Story Kirkbride, who believed that beautiful architecture could cure mental illness. For a brief window, it appeared to work. The asylum operated as a self-sustaining community with its own farm, bakery, and railroad line. Patients attended concerts on the fourth floor. A Wellesley-educated woman named Lizzie Cottier allegedly wrote and published an entire novel from inside the institution. But as wealthy patients left and chronic cases flooded in from overcrowded county poorhouses, the building designed for 600 absorbed somewhere between 3,000 and 4,000. Richardson never saw what his masterpiece became. He died in 1886 at 47, before the building was even finished. By the mid-20th century, Olmsted's therapeutic landscape had been paved over for a parking lot. Three of Richardson's original ward buildings were demolished. The last patients left in 1974. The complex sat abandoned for decades, decaying through Buffalo winters with no maintenance. In 2006, a preservation lawsuit forced New York State to commit $100 million toward rehabilitation. Today, 3 of the 13 original buildings operate as the Richardson Hotel. The other 10 remain in suspended ruin. This is the story of the building that created American architecture, and the people it was supposed to save. Topics covered in this video: Buffalo State Asylum for the Insane, history and founding Henry Hobson Richardson and the birth of Richardsonian Romanesque Frederick Law Olmsted's therapeutic landscape design The Kirkbride Plan and its limitations Lizzie Cottier and "The Right Spirit" (1885) Overcrowding, institutional decline, and patient treatment Deinstitutionalization and the Community Mental Health Act of 1963 30+ years of abandonment and urban decay The preservation fight and $100 million restoration Hotel Henry, the Richardson Hotel, and the building's second life Sources and further reading: Richardson Olmsted Campus official site (richardson-olmsted.com) "Mad House: The Hidden History of Insane Asylums in 19th-Century New York" by Michael Keene Preservation Buffalo Niagara (preservationbuffaloniagara.org) "Reimagining a Buffalo Landmark" (WNED-TV / PBS, 2019) "The Kirkbride Plan" (99% Invisible) National Park Service: Buffalo State Asylum Buffalo Spree: "Unsolved Mysteries" (Lizzie Cottier) Britannica: H.H. Richardson Library of Congress: Historic American Buildings Survey Ward Files explores the history of American psychiatric institutions. New episodes regularly. #BuffaloStateAsylum #RichardsonOlmsted #WardFiles #KirkbridePlan #AbandonedAsylum #HHRichardson #FrederickLawOlmsted #MentalHealthHistory #AbandonedPlaces #RichardsonHotel #BuffaloNY #AsylumHistory #AmericanArchitecture #RichardsonianRomanesque #Deinstitutionalization