ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the developments that led, between 1810 and 1824, to the construction of a number of lunatic asylums on the eastern seaboard of the United States. It suggests that while each of these so-called corporate asylums had its idiosyncrasies, they all also exhibited striking similarities. The chapter also suggest that these "family resemblances" mark them as a distinct departure in the history of American responses to insanity. It shows that, taken together, these institutions had a profound impact on the movement to "reform" the treatment of lunatics in the United States, notwithstanding their eventual fate as asylums for the rich, precursors of the dual, class-based system that is still characteristic of our approach to mental disorder. English historians have long treasured and nurtured the myth of "the peculiarities of the English," their American counterparts have been equally enamored of the image of "the city on the hill," the unique and special destiny of the American Republic.
