Photos by Chad Kleitsch
Located high on a hill overlooking all of Middleton, Connecticut is Connecticut Valley Hospital, a mental institution constructed in the United States in 1886. The facility’s buildings range in age from 40 to 130 years old. Some of the older buildings have been slated for renovation and others for demolition. I was invited to document these places before they were lost.
Before I started this project, I thought it would be a great adventure to explore these old and eerie abandoned mental hospitals. After I had spent several days photographing I began to feel that these places had a lot to teach me. When I am in these places I have learned to quiet my mind, my own idea of what this is, and as clearly and compassionately as possible see what these buildings have to say.
This project has opened my life to a topic that I assumed I understood--mental illness. My re-education led me to feel and see the legacy of ignorance and presumption that caused further suffering for those seeking refuge from their already difficult lives. These places are a 130-year-old statement of how the mentally ill were treated in the past and yet these spaces would not be unfamiliar to a patient today.
– Chad Kleitsch
Connecticut State Hospital was founded in 1868 as the Connecticut Asylum for the Insane and is still in operation. Located in Middletown, the name of the facility has changed several times over the years, as have the methods of treatment there. In 1961, the hospital was renamed Connecticut Valley Hospital (CVH). The structure of CVH now includes a general psychiatric division, a forensic division and a substance abuse division.
The Norwich Hospital for the Insane opened its doors in 1904. Originally designed to hold just a few hundred patients at most, the hospital quickly grew into one of the most infamous in all of New England.
As patients flooded into the facility and the number of employees grew, so did the hospital itself. It opened as a single patient building set on just under 100 acres. By the time of its abandonment, it sprawled over 900 acres and encompassed dozens of buildings. The complex included over twenty patient buildings, an administration building, a greenhouse, industrial buildings, and an employee clubhouse.
The peak of the hospital’s use was in 1955, when 3,186 patients were living on premises. During the seventies, the usefulness of the hospital was brought into question. Those interred at the hospital were staying for shorter and shorter stints. During this same time frame, public opinion began to shift to the view that patients should be treated by their families and communities, not sent away to hospitals. Norwich saw a sharp decline in the number of patients who called the hospital home.
For the duration of its time in operation, Norwich adapted to the shifting attitudes of the public towards mental health. Some years saw dozens of patients pass through, while others saw thousands. Nowadays none pass through, as Norwich stands abandoned, a ruin which reminds us of the past.
The Fairfield State Hospital, more recently called Fairfield Hills, was established in 1932 as an institution for mental patients. The campus consisted of 800-acres on the outskirts of the Newtown in the greater Danbury area. Facilities included a dozen major buildings as well as staff housing, a sewage treatment plant and a large farm. In 1998 Fairfield Hills consisted of 100 buildings on a 185-acre campus. The institution is now closed and the Newtown community is currently considering options for new uses for the complex Going Mental in Newtown
In my town of Newtown, CT, there is an abandoned mental institution called Fairfield Hills Hospital. A few of the buildings are still occupied by the parks and recreation department and the DOT, but most of it is abandoned and in disrepair. A few years ago, part of the movie “Sleepers” was filmed there, with Robert De Niro, Brad Pitt and Kevin Bacon. They turned Fairfield Hills into "Wilkinson Home for Boys.”
It was rumored that the entire hospital was connected underground by tunnels. My senior year of high school, my friends and I decided to check it out. We parked our cars by one of the baseball fields and walked to a building called the "Cochran House.” One of the first floor windows was broken and we went inside. It was damp and dark. We made our way to the basement and found the entrance to a tunnel. We kept walking and came upon a door. We went in and it opened up into what appeared to be an old movie theater. The screen had a huge rip down the middle of it, and it was eerie as hell. We continued down the tunnels for awhile, and came across a lot of weird stuff. We didn't stick around too long, because we were afraid of getting arrested.
A kid that I worked with somehow obtained a copy of a map of the entire hospital. He told me that him and some friends found the morgue. Apparently there is some real crazy shit in there. There is also supposed to be a bowling alley somewhere. There is a lot that I haven't explored yet, which I plan to see this summer.
– Randy Calderone
|
|
