TALA - Writing Challenge, Day 7

August 19, 2018

TALA - Writing Challenge, Day 7

First of all, if you haven't been to the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum (the old Weston State Hospital for locals), you really should catch one of the tours. If you don't know what I'm talking about? Allow me to enlighten you a bit.

From the TALA website:

"This West Virginia facility served as a sanctuary for the mentally ill beginning in the mid-1800's. This 160 year old asylum holds fascinating stories of Civil War raids, a gold robbery, the "curative" effects of architecture, and the efforts of determined individuals to help better the lives of the mentally ill. Tour this nationally recognized historic landmark and see how it left a lasting impression on local and national history."

The first time I toured the old asylum was back in 2008 or 2009. My grandpa, uncle, now ex-boyfriend, and I were travelling back to Philippi from the Jackson's Mill Jubilee and decided to stop. I don't remember which tour we took that particular day (now you can do different sized tours for different parts of the building/grounds), but I do remember being in absolute awe of the hugeness of the building and sad about the things that took place there and also about the condition the building had deteriorated to after being abandoned for around 15 years. I returned three more times in the next few years after that, once with a youth group, once with my cousin, and another time for a ghost hunt at night with my family. Since then, I hadn't been back until Darryl and I went on July 18th of this year.

Construction on the building began in 1858 through 1881. It was originally built to house 250 people, but at its peak capacity, it held over 2,000 (2,400 according to Wikipedia). It closed in 1994 and until it closed was one of two remaining mental institutions during deinstitutionalization.

Pretty much, you could be dropped off and checked in for just about any reason, and once you were there, you couldn't check yourself out. If a family member wanted rid of you, they could drop you off, and you were stuck unless they came back to get you. That happened more often than it should have (and yes, it did happen - not only do the staff running the tours today fully recognize it, but I actually know someone whose husband at the time dropped her off there. I'm not clear on whether it was he or someone else from her family who went back to get her, but it happened. And she is most definitely not mentally ill.)

Reasons accumulated from old patient records for why people were admitted. One of them is actually "menstrual deranged"....so basically, if you were PMSing and your significant other or family couldn't understand your behavior....you could be admitted and not let out until/if they returned for you...

But there were tons of people there who really did need to be there. Many of them actually enjoyed their time there. Those people were well taken care of and accepted when they lived there. They didn't know that anywhere else. Many of them had families who did not want or accept them. The hospital was their home. When deinstitutionalization happened, all of these people were released - back to families who didn't want them, didn't know how to take care of them, or both. Many of them ended up homeless, even if they did start out by being sent back to their families.

When it closed down, it seriously hurt Weston. The hospital was the area's largest employer, and the town has still never fully recovered from the loss.

It's very likely that Sue Parker was actually my first tour guide when I went with my family in 2008. I mentioned to our guide last month that my first tour guide had been a nurse there when the hospital was shut down in 1994, and he was pretty sure that Sue was who I was talking about. She was lovely, and it was especially interesting hearing her take on things since she had actually worked there for an extended period of time before it closed.

Thomas Kirkbride designed the main building, known as the Kirkbride Building. He believed that the mentally ill shouldn't feel as though they were imprisoned. He thought they should have plenty of sunlight, plenty of fresh air, and room to have social interaction. There are larger areas in each ward that were once set up as activity areas for the patients. Lots of windows are spread out across the building. The activity areas are surrounded by them, and there are windows in each room. There are bars in the windows, but they are designed in such a way that if you're standing directly in front of the window, you can't see the bars because they line up exactly with the edges of the window panes. Each bedroom door had a vent over top that could be opened, so that whether the doors were opened or closed, when the windows were opened, fresh air could flow freely through the rooms, across the halls, and out through the other side of the building, allowing a breeze to continuously blow. None of the bedroom doors are directly across the hall from each other. Instead, they're staggered, so that when they were open during the day, sunlight could stream through and naturally brighten up the halls. The walls were painted light, happy colors. The first ward you tour in the hospital has been restored so that the walls are the same color they once were - a pretty yellow. The ceilings and trim are all white. I was so shocked by the change from the last time I'd been there that I was too busy staring at everything to take a picture, but I found one someone else has taken here if you want to check it out. This would have been the first ward you tour, which was the non-violent men's area of the hospital.)

The building was designed so that the less affected patients were on the first floor. They were allowed time out on the grounds. The building has an absolutely massive front lawn that runs the length of the building, which is a quarter of a mile long. The town of Weston held many events there even when the hospital was functioning, and they continue to today. These patients were also sometimes functional enough in society that they could hold jobs in town. So those who did were allowed to go work at their job and then come back to the hospital when they were done.

Bedrooms for the staff who didn't live there full time were on the fourth floor of the building.

The ballroom, as viewed from above. Lot of events were held by the town in this area - school dances, movie nights, etc...

View of one side of the ballroom from the stage.

No one in the entire building was closed into their rooms. They were kept within their specific wards, but they were allowed to roam within them. This also applied to the violent women and men's wards. I would not have wanted to be a nurse assigned to the violent wards in those days. We were told on our tour that the nurses were never allowed to enter one of these wards alone - they had to have another nurse with them, who would walk back-to-back with them so they could see any direction if someone was coming after them.

These violent patient wards were where it seems the most appalling things happened. Treatments were still being explored at the time, and it was usually patients like these on which what we would now consider pretty sketchy treatments were performed. Medical treatments/surgeries aside, they had seclusion and physical restraint. If you go on a tour, you'll likely hear a story passed down from a nurse who worked there who actually broke HIPPA because of something horrific she witnessed regarding a patient who had been in physical restraints for so much longer than should have been acceptable...she reported the treatment in an attempt to help the patient.

Thorazine played a large role in how the nurses were able to keep control of so many patients at once. It was discovered that it could be used to sedate those patients that were usually a handful - they just didn't have the time to dedicate to them with so many patients in comparison to the nurses on staff, so a lot of times, they would dose the worst patients with thorazine in the morning to calm them down while they were trying to tend to everyone...

There was a building that housed the criminally insane, separate from the main building. There is a building to the left as you enter the front lawn; this is the tuberculosis building. They had their own medical center behind the Kirkbride building because the regular hospital in Weston was afraid of their patients, so they had to build their own to care for them when they became physically ill. That was also where they did things such as lobotomies and electroshock therapy, among other treatments that were being explored at the time.

Photos of inside the medical building, 2018. This building has a horrible mold infestation, and is in pretty bad shape, so all you have access to is the first floor hallway...

2018 Photos: On the left, the criminally insane building. On the right, you can see the medical center on the right of the sidewalk and the rear of the Civil War section of the Kirkbride Building on the left of the sidewalk.

They built two geriatric building to house their elderly, and they had their own farm to grow/raise most of their own food. And they had a cemetery on the grounds that is still there today, but the graves have long since lost their markers, so no one truly knows who is there or where they are within the field.

Joe Jordan, the man who bought the hospital in 2007, after it had sat vacant for 14 years, does not make profit on this building. I saw a comment in their website's guest book that alluded to such and said some nasty stuff about the people who run the tours and such because of it. Everything made off of the tours and merchandise sales goes back into restoring the building.

I can clearly see that this is true, based upon my first visits after it was opened to the public, compared to when Darryl and I went for a tour this year. They're working on it ward by ward, and it's a slow process because the place is so huge and was in such sad disrepair when they acquired it. But they are working on restoring the structure itself and on furnishing it in such a way to showcase what it was like at a time during which it worked the way it should have (obviously not during the overcrowding). Mr. Jordan's daughter, who I have met, travels to auctions, estate sales, etc. and buys furniture to furnish the staff apartments, offices, dining areas, etc. (so far). It was truly amazing to walk through and see the changes that have been done. When I first went, paint was peeling off the walls, things were broken and had fallen into just general disrepair from being left alone for so long. There was no furniture like there are in these pictures. It truly was sad...interesting, but very sad.

One of the original dining rooms, before the large dining area was built behind the Kirkbride building

Now when you tour, there are parts of the asylum that have been fixed up that are truly like taking a step back into the past. The history behind this place is immense and something that no one should forget. You can't erase what happened. It was a place that tried to do right by these people...though mental illness was still very much being learned about and in some ways very misunderstood. But for all the bad stories you'll learn, you'll learn about just as many people and situations that were positive.

My pictures shown throughout this post really don't do it all justice. I got some decent ones, but overall I was trying to pay more attention to the stories our guide was relaying than to getting all the pictures I could have been getting. If you're interested in learning more about a huge part of local medical history...go for a tour. The proceeds from your ticket go back into restoring the building, and all things considered, the ticket prices don't seem that bad. We did the 4 floor + 1st floor of the medical center tour, and it was about $30 each. There are many different tours available though, that explore different areas of the grounds. You can take a look here.f

I'll leave you with a few more photos. I hope you found this interesting and that maybe you'll be prompted to go for a visit yourself - I feel like I learn something new every time I've gone.