A sign at the former Medfield State Hospital reads “Remember us for we too have lived, loved and laughed”. It’s a poignant reminder of those who spent time in this place, once somewhere between hospital and prison, today somewhere between tranquil and sufficiently terrifying that it was used as the setting for Martin Scorsese’s 2010 film Shutter Island.
This section of Medfield was known as Harding, and it was largely farmland owned by the Harding, and later Bishop and Morrill families, until the Commonwealth of Massachusetts purchased it in 1890. South of Hospital Road was the home of a prominent local attorney, Jonathan Parker Bishop (1792-1865). North of Hospital Road were farms owned by Joseph L. Breck, Daniel B. Morrill, and Jonathan Bishop’s son, Moses Bullen Harding Bishop (1817 - 1904). There seems to have been little affection between father and son, as Jonathan Bishop’s will left “my son Moses B. H. Bishop my pocketknife which may be found in the right pocket of the pants I last wore” and “to my very dear and dutiful son Robert Roberts Bishop ten shares in the capital stock of the New York & Boston Railroad Company and one thousand dollars.”1
Sherman’s Atlas of Norfolk County, Massachusetts, published in 1876, shows the Breck, Bishop, and Taber properties along what is now Hospital Road (the Taber farm would later be absorbed into the Daniel B. Morrill farm).
The former Moses B. H. Bishop farmhouse survives today in a sorely neglected state as Medfield State Hospital’s Building 36.
On 10 December 1890, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts purchased the Bishop and Morrill holdings to create a hospital “for the care of chronic and incurable cases of the insane”. The concept was not in itself particularly innovative as there were already facilities in Worcester (1833), Taunton (1854), Northampton (1856), and Danvers (1878), however, the Medfield Asylum was the first such property dedicated to chronic mental patients and the first to utilize the so-called “Cottage Plan”. Earlier institutions were based upon a design by Philadelphia psychiatrist Thomas Story Kirkbride which featured multiple wings extending off a central core, maximizing natural light and enabling staff to travel throughout the facility while remaining indoors. The Cottage Plan featured separate, carefully arranged buildings in a bucolic campus-like setting offering tranquility and, in all probability, lower acquisition and maintenance costs.
The architect chosen to design the new facility was William Pitt Wentworth (1839-1896). Born in Bellows Falls, Vermont in 1839, Wentworth was educated first at Boston Mercantile Academy and later in New York. Withey’s Biographical Dictionary of American Architects (Deceased) tells us only that he:
completed an early education in New York and studied architecture in that city. Returning to New England, Mr. Wentworth set up an office for practice in Boston, and during thirty years or more continued active in his chosen profession. Among the best known examples of his public buildings were the Flower Memorial Church in Watertown, N.Y. and the State Hospital for the Insane built at Medfield, Mass.2
Wentworth’s specialty appears to have been ecclesiastical architecture and he traveled widely in his practice. Additional examples of his work include Immanuel Church in his hometown of Bellows Falls, Vermont (1867), the Church of Saint Lawrence in Alexandria Bay, New York (1889), and Saint George’s Episcopal Church in Leadville, Colorado. His private commissions included 256 Commonwealth Avenue (1879) and 447 Marlborough Street (1886) in Boston as well as Johnson Castle (1886) in Proctor, Vermont. Wentworth died in Newton, Massachusetts on 12 April 1896, making Medfield State Hospital one of his last and most expansive works.
The 425-acre complex was largely completed in 1895 and included 18 hospital wards, Saint Jude’s Chapel, and an Administration Building. Designed with a capacity of 1,000 “inmates”, it opened in 1896 as the Medfield Insane Asylum for the Chronic Insane. In 1909 the name was changed to Medfield State Asylum, and, in 1914, Medfield State Hospital. At that point, the classification of its residents was changed from “inmates” to “patients”.
Wentworth’s death in 1896 meant that subsequent additions to the facility would necessarily be designed by others, and later structures are stylistically different. Ward R (Building 13) at the north end of the campus, was designed by Park & Kendall and constructed in 1904 to house “excitable female patients”. Ward S (Building 7) was designed by Shepley, Rutan & Coolidge and constructed in 1906 to house “disturbed males”. It was later used for aged patients and as a training academy. The East and West Halls (Buildings 29 and 2) were women’s and men’s staff dormitories, also designed by Park & Kendall and constructed in 1903 and 1904 respectively.
The land south of Hospital Road (formerly Canal Street) was the site of a substantial “farm colony” developed in 1901. The intent was for milk and produce from Medfield to supply the State’s other hospitals. In addition to a resident farmer and 10 to 15 farmhands, some 30 patients worked on the hospital farm. Almost nothing survives, but at one time the farm colony included a sizeable dormitory for patients and staff as well as multiple barns and outbuildings. Bromley’s 1909 Atlas of Needham, Dover, Westwood, Millis, and Medfield shows two rail spurs serving the hospital, presumably facilitating both the delivery of supplies and the shipment of produce.
The Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918-1919 brought a significant increase in patient mortality that threatened to overwhelm Medfield’s Vine Lake Cemetery. As a result, a hospital cemetery was created off Route 27 near the Charles River. It remains a private, peaceful place, distinguished by unobtrusive gravestones that lie flush with the ground, and a sign at the entrance that once again reminds the visitor to “remember us, for we too have lived, laughed, and loved.”
Designed with a capacity of 1,000 patients, by 1907 the hospital reportedly housed 1,554. It was sufficiently large that it had its own Federal Census designation and, for much of its existence, had a population greater than the town in which it was situated. The 1910 Census listed 300 employees and 1,600 patients while the town itself had a population of 1,583. The 1940 Census listed 348 employees and 1,972 patients, which suggests serious overcrowding. A 1938 report by the State Commission on Administration and Finance noted “a lack of discipline among the medical staff”, characterizing conditions in sanitary rooms as “abominable” and facilities as “inadequate and antiquated”.3 The scandal was exacerbated by charges that the hospital’s burial account was being used to buy baseball equipment while deceased patients were being dumped in a potter’s field without shrouds or coffins.4 The lack of oversight was no doubt a contributing factor in the deaths of three patients at the hands of their fellows in late 1937 and early 1938. The press dubbed the killings “the Maniac Murders”.
In 1958 the four-story George O. Clark Building, named for a former trustee, was constructed at the south end of the campus off Hospital Road. Box-like and thoroughly institutional in its appearance, the Clark Building stood in stark contrast to Wentworth’s neatly arranged Queen Anne structures. The Clark Building housed a medical unit with operating rooms, an x-ray laboratory, a teaching unit, and various hospital amenities as well as 196 patients.
The Community Mental Health Act of 1963 and the increased use of psychotropic drugs in the treatment of mental illness initiated a shift toward outpatient care that significantly reduced the need for residential treatment facilities. By 2000 only 147 patients remained at Medfield and they were transferred to Westboro State Hospital before Medfield State Hospital was closed in 2003. The Clark Building was demolished in 2012 and, in 2014, 128 acres including the campus and its decaying structures were sold to the Town of Medfield.
Rarely do abandoned properties in eastern Massachusetts come to a good end, and yet the future of this remarkable place appears promising. In June of 2022, the campus was sold to Trinity Acquisitions, LLC for conversion to 334 apartment units of which 25% will be designed affordable. The conversion will entail the historic rehabilitation of the existing structures while the chapel was retained by the town and is to be repurposed as a performing arts center. The remaining land will be preserved as open space for passive recreational and agricultural uses.
Will of Jonathan Parker Bishop. Norfolk County Probate Records Volume 115 Pages 34-35.
Henry F. Withey, A.I.A. & Elsie Rathbun Withey, Biographical Dictionary of American Architects (Deceased), (Los Angeles: New Age Publishing Co., 1956) 644.
Barre Daily Times 9 April 1938
Berkshire Evening Sun 2 April 1938