The Ridges #1 – Athens, Ohio

The Ridges, formerly called the Athens Lunatic Asylum, was a mental hospital operated in Athens, Ohio from 1874 until 1993. During its operation, the hospital provided services to a variety of patients including Civil War veterans, children, and violent criminals suffering from various mental disabilities. Today, the Ridges are a part of Ohio University and house the Kennedy Museum of Art, an auditorium and many offices, classrooms, and storage facilities. The former hospital is perhaps best known as a site of the infamous lobotomy procedure, as well as various supposed paranormal sightings. After the hospital’s original structure closed, the state of Ohio acquired the property and renamed the complex and its surrounding grounds

The designs of the buildings and grounds were influenced by Dr. Thomas Story Kirkbride, a 19th-century physician, advocate for the mentally ill, and founder of the Association of Medical Superintendents of American Institutions for the Insane (AMSAII), a precursor to the American Psychiatric Association. Kirkbride had been influenced by the Quaker-founded York Retreat in England whose leader, Samuel Tuke, had published an account entitled, Practical Hints on the Construction and Economy of Pauper Lunatic Asylums (York, England, 1815). The Tuke family had instituted in their hospital a "moral treatment" approach to care for patients, which centered upon humane and kindly behaviour. The Superintendents’ Association made efforts to institute this approach in their hospitals. Kirkbride's ideas brought about mixed feelings in both patients and peers. Some in the medical community saw his theories and ideas as stubbornly clinging to ideals that hindered medical progress, while others supported his ideas, and saw them change the treatment philosophy for the mentally insane. In his patients, he sometimes inspired fear and anger, even to the point that one attempted to murder him, but he also believed that the mentally ill could be treated, and possibly cured, and Kirkbride actually married a former patient after his first wife died.

Kirkbride authored an influential treatise on hospital design called, On the Construction, Organization and General Arrangements of Hospitals for the Insane. Kirkbride buildings are most recognizably characterized by their "bat wing" floor plan and often lavish Victorian-era architecture. The architect for the original building was Levi T. Scofield of Cleveland. Based on the Kirkbride plan, the main building was to include an administration building and two wings that included three sections. The males were housed in the left wards and females in the right. They each had their own specific dining halls. There was room to house 572 patients in the main building. Almost double of what Kirkbride had recommended. This overpopulating of the facility lead to conflicts between the patients.