trans-allegheny lunatic asylum riles some “folks”
Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum. © matthewsalibi.comWDTV featured a story earlier this week about protesters at the new Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum in Weston. I visited the asylum in the end of May; the newly-offered historic tour was one of the highlights of my most recent visit home to West Virginia.
Among the protester’s complaints: the name “Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum” is insensitive to former patients. And, maybe it is. But the name is not (just) for effect - it was the original name of the hospital when its construction was authorized by the Virginia General Assembly in the 1850’s. It’s historical. (The obvious retort is that just because a name is historic doesn’t mean it’s appropriate a hundred and fifty years later, but the name Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum doesn’t bother me.)
There are things that don’t sit right about the newly reopened asylum. Calling the mud bog race track around the grounds of the asylum the “Psychopath” may be clever, but it’s not classy. [See Joe Jordan's comment below for clarification on this point.] The “I Went Nuts at the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum” t-shirts? Well, I wouldn’t wear one (and I probably would wear a t-shirt with a simple drawing of the building).
But the “Haunted Hospital” that area high school kids hold in the asylum’s long abandoned wards seems grossly disrespectful. These Haunted Hospital events have smeared fake blood on the walls of one ward and left and all manner of cheesy, grisly set-ups. For a place that was home to so much genuine horror to so many desperately sick people, it’s sickening to see it tarted up as a teenage haunted house.
Those things notwithstanding, I think Joe Jordan and Rebecca Jordan-Gleason’s decision to buy and renovate the hospital is laudable. The three-hour historic tour is even-handed and educational. Our tour guide, who worked in the hospital from the 1970’s through it’s closing in 1994 conducted the tour with fairness and warmth.
She began our tour by saying plainly that some terrible things happened at Weston, and there had been some bad people who worked there. That’s not news to anyone, but her candor was both engaging and surprising. She emphasized that there had also been some good people who cared deeply about improving the patient quality of life. Throughout the tour, it became clear that she herself cared very much about her patients. It was evident from the very beginning of the tour, when she saw my friend an I admiring a painting in the waiting area, and came up to explain that she had bought it from a patient who was also an artist, and explained the painting’s symbolism — what it meant to the artist, what it meant to her.
She didn’t sugarcoat anything, but told us the history of the building and of a few of the people she had known there. Impressively, she worked to place it all in a broader historical context, with a particular emphasis on changing attitudes toward the mentally ill, and the roles of Dorothea Dix and Thomas Story Kirkbride.
It was the sort of tour I imagine the advocates for the disabled at the Northern West Virginia Center for Independent Living would endorse, if they had a chance to experience it. It was every bit as humane as you’d hope.
The Jordan’s restoration plan is also admirable because of the hospital’s tremendous historic value. It’s a sprawling, century-and-a-half old building, the largest hand-cut stone building in the USA (and the second largest in the world, second only to the Kremlin, according to our tour guide.) It housed both union and confederate soldiers (and their horses!) during the Civil War, and had a fire-damaged ward rebuilt by the Works Progress Administration in “luxurious” 1940’s style.
And this is to say nothing of the fact that it’s a Kirkbride building. Thomas Story Kirkbride revolutionized the treatment of the mentally ill in the mid nineteenth century. Nearly 200 hospitals were built using the Kirkbride Plan (hallmarks of which are isolation in the country, self-sufficient communities, high ceilings and plenty of sunlight and fresh air.) On the tour, we learned that there are only 14 of these institutions left standing today; two will be torn down this year, while Weston is the only one being actively renovated.
Finally, the opening of the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum is a good thing because Weston, like a lot of towns in West Virginia, seems to be slowly dying. But on the weekday afternoon that we toured the hospital, there were ten or twelve people in our group, all from out of state. Visiting Weston! (Weston!) At $30 each, that means the hospital is bringing plenty money into the town - and not just into the hospital. My friend and I had an enjoyable lunch at a charming independently owned restaurant downtown, as I imagine most out-of-state tourists do.
I do wish the asylum would lay off advertising opportunities for “experienced ghost-hunting groups” to stay overnight at the asylum, but I suspect that this is one of the quickest ways to make some money to put back into the renovation. The woman at the registration desk told me that they were hoping to have the roof repaired by the end of the year, which she said will cost five million dollars. In my mind, the hokiness of hawking to credulous ghost-hunters is offset by the eventual goal of getting more of the building safe and open for historic tours.
(As a side note, I dearly love WDTV for being an actual television station that lots of people watch for news — a real TV news station that does not hesitate to write a headline prominently featuring the word “folks.” As the subject!)
Update: Insightful opinions and some good comments on this issue at the remarkable Kirkbride Buildings Blog.
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Dear Sir,
I am a real life former “lunatic” and I find the resurrection of that term offensive and hurtful. Perhaps four dollar plus a gallon gas prices will put a damper on their plans to profit from our suffering. Their timing to open some kind of a warped recreation center couldn’t be worse. Even the “fun” theme parks are sufferning. May God curse their enterprize.
I have a correction. The mud bogs are just that mud bogs, the “Psychopath” was a bike race (run by a third party) that was canceled at the very beginning.
The T-shirt besides having a man in a straight jacket and the phrase “I went nuts at….” on the front it has a list of the most absurd reasons for being admitted. I know that it is meant to point out that many of us today would have been placed in a cell.
Joe, thanks for the clarification re: the mud bogs. I added a note to the post.
The list of absurd conditions which, at one point, qualified people for admission to the hospital is really fascinating, and does a good job of demonstrating evolving ideas of mental health and the barbaric recent past we’ve come from. Which, as I said, I think your staff and volunteers do a really good job of conveying.
However, I do think the “I went nuts at…” design plays into your critics’ complaints of insensitivity.
I am a supporter of the project; I really appreciate the time and money you’ve spent to restore the truly amazing building, and to educate people about its often difficult history. I look forward to revisiting Weston in the future to see the progress. (Congrats on getting the grant to restore the clock tower!)
All best,
Matthew
The claim that this twisted project is a legitamet museum is just a public relations spin. Don’t you believe it. A lot of people have and are being hurt. There are people still alive who have been in that hospital. And I have been in a similar place. Their termonology is offensive. Those words should not be resurrected any more than some racial slurs that we know.
I am only fourteen and i went into a Lunatic Asylum for youngsters when i was seven, i got out one year ago so i remember very well what went on.
I too had a straight jacket that said something on the back, it was a very hurtful phrase which said, “Beware Dangerous Lunatic” in capital letters.
I was not dangerous, they just classed me as dangerous because i would scream and shout when they tried to make me go to sleep at 7:30pm.
But i do thank them for making me better, after they made me worse.
Sarah
I like being able to write all these things down about what is going on, because im not allowed to keep diaries because my parents were told by the asylum workers that it will just bring all my memories back and make me, as jill the worker a said “Lunatic” again.
i’ve started to devolop strange doings that i used to do, so maybe writing this all down isn’t a good idea,
i’m pretty sure i will be back at the asylum again sometime soon, and i only got out a year ago, like i mentioned in my last paragraph.
Sarah
About my “ex-Asylum”.
When i wouldn’t go sleep at the time i was told 7:30pm they would hold my arms behind my back and walk me to my room, make me lay on my bed, and strap me down with one large belt over my chest and one other over my legs.
We had to shower every morning, if we refused they would either sit us under the shower in our clothes, or send us to our room and told us to not come out because we smell.
We had locks on our doors so that we couldn’t get out because they are affraid we might go crazy and attack them “thats what i think there for anyway”.
Meal times was the only normal thing, we had normal meals and normal portions, but Laura, the friend i made when i used to be in the asylum, she was scared to eat the food, she said it had the devils face, and if she ate it, it would eat up her insides, so she had to be fed through a tube with liquidised food.
Sarah
If this is a true story, it sounds like child abuse to me.
Sorry Sarah that I doubted your story, I didn’t notice the flag by your name. In the USA such treatment of psychiatric patients is illegal. I’m not saying abuse doesn’t happen here; I’ve experienced most of what you write about, all except being physically labeled a “dangerous lunatic,” but not all in one hospital. I’ve been in 10 different hospitals over a lifetime. During my first hospitalization, at the tender age of 19, they drugged me to death’s door, and when I came to, I was really sick. I’ve even experienced the hand-behind-your back form of oppression.
I’ve really been hurt by the stigma associated with mental illness. I’ve been hurt as much by the stigma as I have been by the terrible illness itself. I’ve been hurt by family, church members, members of the medical profession and co-workers. Every institution known to man has failed me in my darkest hour. Only God himself was faithful to me.
well i on the other hand am a huge supporter of the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum, and happen to think that they are doing not only Weston butt the state of west Virginia A world of good. they are only trying to help out local businessmen that are being run out by no tourism because there is nothing to do but now there is and every sense even driving i see cars for all over even form California. that clear on the west coast. and everybody that visits always has something positive to say about everything in general. it seems the only problem we have are the people who need to get a grip on the world and realize that we did not place this so called stigma there and if you think about it has always been there and nothing will ever change. people have always had one do to all of the unknowns and we are just trying to spread the word to let them know what is was like what has become and were there needs to be improvements that’s all nothing else and it seems all the former patients that come for tours or even families of former patient’s love and appreciate our tours even more than most people.
BUT
sorry that’s what happens when you do not proof read first
Such rank ignorance.