Landscape
"The building itself should be placed on a gentle eminence, surrounded by land of a dry fertile soil, and at a convenient distance from some market town, from whence the supplies for the establishment can be obtained, yet not so near as to subject the patients when abroad to the annoying gaze of the idle and curious. The surrounding scenery should be agreeably diversified with hill, valley and lawn, and contain many points of interest so near as to be seen distinctly, which is a characteristic more important in engaging the attention of the beholder than even a more splendid landscape, with objects too remote for perfect vision."
-Horace A. Buttolph, 1847
"The building itself should be placed on a gentle eminence, surrounded by land of a dry fertile soil, and at a convenient distance from some market town, from whence the supplies for the establishment can be obtained, yet not so near as to subject the patients when abroad to the annoying gaze of the idle and curious. The surrounding scenery should be agreeably diversified with hill, valley and lawn, and contain many points of interest so near as to be seen distinctly, which is a characteristic more important in engaging the attention of the beholder than even a more splendid landscape, with objects too remote for perfect vision."
-Horace A. Buttolph, 1847
Practicality governed the landscape of the moral asylum both economically and medically. The first rule of asylum landscaping focused on the physical situation of the building. Because of the need to create a unique space for the insane, physicians believed that moral asylums needed to be situated several miles outside of a city or town on scenic property. Typically an additional 100 acres of land was needed for agricultural labors, pleasure gardens, and natural views. This space provided a place for patients to engage their mind through healthy activity while discouraging visits from curious members of the community who were culturally accustomed to visiting asylums to observe the patients.
The McLean Asylum (1811), depicted in the image to the right, is a good illustration of how these geographic qualifications could be met. The buildings are placed atop a gentle hill providing broad views of the bucolic landscape. A natural environment surrounds buildings interrupted only by a river and access road. The presence of the river provides the asylum with a source of water as well as a means of transportation for goods and patients. Despite this connection to the outside world, a wall and grove of trees clearly enclose the asylum creating a private space uniquely constructed to heal the diseased mind.
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Economically asylums could not be completely shut off from the world. They needed patients and their families to have access to the services provided by the institution. Without patients there could be no asylum. Additionally, large acreage provided the asylum with space to cultivate gardens and raise livestock for consumption by the asylum patients and employees but the institution still required access to foodstuffs produced outside of their grounds. Although physicians recognized the need to sequester asylums from the outside world, they still relied on the commerce and population of urban areas to support the large institutions with patients, goods, and money.
Medically, moral physicians manipulated the asylum landscape to produce gardens, airing courts, and walkways. These features fell in line with the mainstream belief that a cultivated, yet natural landscape held the potential to refine the uneducated, even insane, mind. Superintendent Isaac Ray summed up this idea by writing that a moral landscape worked by:
arresting the attention of the violent and excited, diverting the melancholic from their distressing fancies, furnishing inexhaustible occupation and delight to the convalescent, and touching, in all, even the least cultivated and refined, that strong feeling of sympathy with nature, which often survives the wreck of all other feelings.
By touching the mind, or inherent humanity, of the insane through a refined landscape physicians hoped to gain a stronghold in their patients through which a treatment could be affected.
At the State Asylum in Morristown, New Jersey, landscape architects built terraces, airing courts, and walking paths to be enjoyed by the institution's patients. Visible in the above illustration are people promenading throughout the grounds taking advantage of the contrived, natural landscape. In the two images below nature is clearly visible in the foreground of the asylums. In the left image there are people strolling through cultivated grounds indicating civilization's control of nature while in the right image there is a cluster of deer emphasizing the asylum's close connection with and reliance on the natural world. Structure was key, but so too was nature.
arresting the attention of the violent and excited, diverting the melancholic from their distressing fancies, furnishing inexhaustible occupation and delight to the convalescent, and touching, in all, even the least cultivated and refined, that strong feeling of sympathy with nature, which often survives the wreck of all other feelings.
By touching the mind, or inherent humanity, of the insane through a refined landscape physicians hoped to gain a stronghold in their patients through which a treatment could be affected.
At the State Asylum in Morristown, New Jersey, landscape architects built terraces, airing courts, and walking paths to be enjoyed by the institution's patients. Visible in the above illustration are people promenading throughout the grounds taking advantage of the contrived, natural landscape. In the two images below nature is clearly visible in the foreground of the asylums. In the left image there are people strolling through cultivated grounds indicating civilization's control of nature while in the right image there is a cluster of deer emphasizing the asylum's close connection with and reliance on the natural world. Structure was key, but so too was nature.