ABSTRACT
Industrialization and urbanization transformed New York State into an economic and cultural powerhouse that utilized abundant natural resources, highly navigable water systems, railroads, large immigrant populations, and market forces to create a complex state structure. As part of this structural development, between 1843 and 1890, New York also built seven state-run insane asylums at Utica, Ovid, Binghamton, Poughkeepsie, Middletown, Buffalo, and Ogdensburg. Most asylums required large amounts of land to treat hundreds of patients because farming, access to natural resources, and a largely rural setting were considered essential for treating the mentally unwell. Moral treatment, the Quaker-inspired psychiatric practice embraced at the time, combined spiritual guidance, behavior modifications, and physical labor to administer healing to patients and restore moral strength. Doctors and administrators believed that regimented daily routines could adjust mind, body, and spirit back to a reasoned state. A fundamental component of implementing moral treatment was asylum design. Within buildings and landscapes, the physical bodies of patients were organized by function, severity of illness, and gender. Class, ethnicity, and race also factored into the asylum patient equation, often in biased or opaque manners.
