Rockwood Asylum

You don’t need to head out to the country roads to view aged, abandoned or dilapidated buildings. Kingston is quite old and you can find those gems within the city. Below are some images of Rockwood Asylum, an abandoned psychiatric hospital near the water, and very close to our home, that we stopped off to see a couple of weeks ago. It was rather cold that day, so I didn’t take as many photos as I’d intended. I didn't even snap a photo of the front of the building, so I’ll have to return at some point.

Anyway...

 

The building is located far into the grounds, a considerable distance from the street. Designers of the facility stated that this was because they didn’t want the patients to be frightened or disturbed by the people outside. But it’s believed that the city people simply wanted to be as far away from these ‘deviants’ as possible. This sounds more truthful since society has not always been kind to the mentally ill.

 

 

 

The institution was built by the criminally insane prisoners it intended to rehabilitate in order to save the province money on construction costs. Groups of convicts were sent from the penitentiary daily to work on the site.

 

 

 

When Rockwood Asylum was completed in 1859, it housed 300 patients, which included prisoners, lepers, promiscuous women (deemed mentally unwell at the time) and ‘mentally disturbed’ Kingston residents.

 

 

 

As the years progressed, the demographics of the asylum changed, and elderly members were brought in by their families. Inevitably, the asylum went from being a hospital for the insane to a home for incurables.

 

 

Between 1866 and 1906, 4,204 patients were admitted, 74 percent of them older than 60. Most of them admitted to Rockwood died there.

 

 

This building surely has many stories to tell, some of which are not very pleasant. The lives led behind these walls must have been filled with loneliness, sadness and even terror.

 

 

A photo shoot at this building will be planned at some point this spring or summer with the photography group I joined last year. I’d love to be able to get inside and take a closer look, but I don’t think it will happen. If by some miracle it does, I will share some images with you.

 

This grim building has been closed since 2000 and has been for sale since then without much luck. From what I've read in an article published by The Queen's Journal, a student-run newspaper at Queen's University, the layout isn't appealing for modern use. It was built to treat the mentally ill, and the interior is cold and severe. “...very institutional in the worst sense of the word: intimidating, conforming..."

As a society, we need to continue to strive toward reducing and eventually eliminating the stigma and discrimination surrounding mental illness, and become more tolerant, understanding and supportive of people suffering from it. Attitudes are getting better, but we still have a long way to go.