ThoughtGallery.org > Kirkbride Hospitals for the Insane: Part 2—A Book Launch, Panel Discussion and Video Screenings

Kirkbride Hospitals for the Insane: Part 2—A Book Launch, Panel Discussion and Video Screenings

With Robert Kirkbride, Rusty Tagliareni and Christina Mathews

In this follow-up to his sold-out lecture in March, Dr. Kirkbride will summarize recent developments in preserving and transforming Kirkbride Hospitals for the Insane and the related efforts of PreservationWorks, a non-profit committed to this work. Dr. Kirkbride will be joined by Rusty Tagliareni and Christina Mathews to celebrate and discuss the launch of their new book, Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital, and will screen several related video projects, including samplings from a documentary-in-process, Greystone’s Last Stand, and Greystone Rising (Jody Johnson, Lisa Marie Blohm, C. Mathews), which won Best of Architecture category at the 2016 New York City Drone Film Festival. Copies of Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital will be available for purchase and the event will include a book signing.

Throughout the second half of the nineteenth century, 75 “Kirkbride Plan” Asylums were constructed across the United States, Canada and Australia according to the vision of Dr. Thomas Story Kirkbride, a pivotal figure in the development of Psychiatry in the United States and a forebear of Robert Kirkbride. Although conceived under the Enlightenment belief in the therapeutic powers of beauty, and despite egalitarian ideals to provide a dignified place of care for the placeless, these asylums offer cautionary reminders of the frailties of human infrastructures and bureaucratization in the name of efficiency.

There are complex and conflicting views toward the preservation or destruction of Kirkbride Hospitals. Embracing this complexity is critical to the imaginative reuse of these immense structures, which average hundreds of thousands of square feet and offer remarkable examples of architectural know-how, embodied energy and memory, personal and communal. They also offer remarkable opportunity. Recently, in the wake of the needless and highly contested demolition of Greystone Park State Asylum, in Parsippany, N.J., a national organization has emerged to advocate the preservation and adaptive reuse of the remaining 34 Kirkbride Hospitals.











When: Wed., Sep. 21, 2016 at 7:00 pm
Where: Morbid Anatomy Museum
424 Third Ave. Brooklyn

Price: $8
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With Robert Kirkbride, Rusty Tagliareni and Christina Mathews

In this follow-up to his sold-out lecture in March, Dr. Kirkbride will summarize recent developments in preserving and transforming Kirkbride Hospitals for the Insane and the related efforts of PreservationWorks, a non-profit committed to this work. Dr. Kirkbride will be joined by Rusty Tagliareni and Christina Mathews to celebrate and discuss the launch of their new book, Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital, and will screen several related video projects, including samplings from a documentary-in-process, Greystone’s Last Stand, and Greystone Rising (Jody Johnson, Lisa Marie Blohm, C. Mathews), which won Best of Architecture category at the 2016 New York City Drone Film Festival. Copies of Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital will be available for purchase and the event will include a book signing.

Throughout the second half of the nineteenth century, 75 “Kirkbride Plan” Asylums were constructed across the United States, Canada and Australia according to the vision of Dr. Thomas Story Kirkbride, a pivotal figure in the development of Psychiatry in the United States and a forebear of Robert Kirkbride. Although conceived under the Enlightenment belief in the therapeutic powers of beauty, and despite egalitarian ideals to provide a dignified place of care for the placeless, these asylums offer cautionary reminders of the frailties of human infrastructures and bureaucratization in the name of efficiency.

There are complex and conflicting views toward the preservation or destruction of Kirkbride Hospitals. Embracing this complexity is critical to the imaginative reuse of these immense structures, which average hundreds of thousands of square feet and offer remarkable examples of architectural know-how, embodied energy and memory, personal and communal. They also offer remarkable opportunity. Recently, in the wake of the needless and highly contested demolition of Greystone Park State Asylum, in Parsippany, N.J., a national organization has emerged to advocate the preservation and adaptive reuse of the remaining 34 Kirkbride Hospitals.

Buy tickets/get more info now