The Philadelphia State Hospital at Byberry: A History of Misery and Medicine (Landmarks) (PA)

by J. P. Webster

  Director Neff, not wanting to recreate Blockley, was specific in his criterion for the new hospital. With a group of buildings, rather than a single building, more could be added as needed to accommodate overcrowding. Still planning to build on the Brown tract in Torresdale, Neff had a grand vision for the new hospital. After a survey was taken of the land, it was realized that the acreage was far too small for what the DPHC had planned. Not wanting to waste the department’s newly approved $3 million appropriation on an inferior project, Neff suggested that “such buildings for the insane as may be constructed on the Byberry farms shall be of temporary character only, so that the tract may be devoted to other purposes without great financial loss when the State assumes care of the insane.” He foresaw Byberry’s predicament, having battled Blockley’s numbers, and assumed from the beginning that State control was inevitable.

  In a letter to Johnson, printed in the Evening Public Ledger, Neff’s concerns to the architect were as follows:

  It is impossible to determine with accuracy the number of feeble minded to be cared for by the city of Philadelphia and their grouping. I desire you to figure, however, on the following estimate:

  One cottage to accommodate 25 male idiots, one cottage to accommodate 25 female idiots, one cottage to accommodate 96 high grade imbeciles under 20 years, one cottage to accommodate 96 high grade imbeciles over 20 years, one cottage to accommodate 96 middle grade imbeciles over 20 years, one cottage to accommodate 48 middle grade imbeciles under 20 years, making a total of 368 beds. I estimate from the appropriation that we will be able to accommodate at least 400. Buildings needed will be Laundry, Power House, Administration building, Infirmary or hospital to contain forty beds, Stable, Industrial building, Amusement Hall, Dining Rooms, Kitchen and Store House. Cottages for feeble minded will be grouped around a common centre, in all probability a semi-circle, which buildings are to be placed 150 feet apart. I have spent considerable time on the grounds in laying out the various buildings, but the plan I had schemed was entirely frustrated after studying the survey that you brought to me yesterday, owing to the fact that Torresdale avenue is to cut through the middle and most important part of our property, and an entire rearrangement of grouping must be made. I had desired the administration building and the amusement hall in front of the woods facing the Bristol pike, with its beautiful approach through the avenue of handsome trees.

  When the Committee of One Hundred and the City Surveyors decided in 1912 to erect the new buildings at Byberry, the farmhouses were still being used to house patients, and more room was desperately needed. The department’s plan was already in place. Moving away from the “Kirkbride” style of a single hospital building and deciding on a cottage plan, or a group of buildings, the city was clearly thinking progressively to avoid another Blockley situation. By erecting smaller, inexpensive buildings, rather than one large expensive structure, the city could easily add more as needed to maintain control of overcrowding. The 875 acres at Byberry that the City now owned could accommodate the need for space.

  But before anything could be started, the friction of the Gang was pushing its way into the picture. In a second attempt to shake Johnson free from its dealings, on October 15, 1912, the Board of Charities approved a contract with Mark P. Wells to design two buildings to house three hundred male patients at Byberry. Upon hearing of this, Johnson sued the city for breach of contract, claiming his contract gave him sole responsibility of the design and construction of the buildings at Byberry. After a melody of praise and polishing by council, Johnson’s contract held up. The Wells contract was thrown away, and Johnson received the rights for every building to be built at the hospital. This would only be the first of several times Johnson would be at battle in the courts over his precious contract.

  The board had approved plans for three dormitory buildings in December 1908. The work began in January 1910 but was not completed for almost four years. These dormitories, the first buildings constructed by the city for its new hospital, were Buildings A and C in the East Group and Cottage I (C-9) in the West Group. The central sewage plant was built along the Poquessing Creek on the Keigler tract. On the East Group, the power plant and kitchen building was completed in 1914. The operation of the plant became difficult, however, as the supply of coal from the city’s barges on the Delaware River had to be trucked in from the House of Correction property several times a day.

  Most mental institutions in the early twentieth century contained patient cemeteries on their grounds. Peculiarly, Byberry did not. As part of Philadelphia County, Byberry’s dead would have been collected by the county coroner’s office. If not claimed by family after thirty-six hours, the body would be handed over to the State Anatomical Board for dissection purposes. Many thought this time frame too short and cried out against the “thirty-six hour law.” County Coroner William R. Knight was one such person. He came up in the ranks as part of the post–Durham Gang and not without his share of accusations of jury tampering. But Knight proved an honest man—ultimately, too honest. The Gang had a hard time controlling him as he pressed for humanitarian causes, in some cases, at a cost to the city.

  The laborers that built Byberry were mostly immigrants. They were bussed to the worksite from city hall every morning and paid thirty-five cents per hour. Johnson’s contract gave him control of nearly every aspect of his projects, including the supervision of construction. Johnson rarely visited the Byberry worksite, however. He hired fellow Machine men to inspect the property in his place. While he hired cheap labor and used inferior materials, he charged the city top dollar and pocketed the difference. Ignorance and irresponsibility were already settling in at Byberry.

  Chapter 3

  BUILDING BEDLAM

  The Crooked Construction Process

  Despite his discreet dealings and notoriety, Johnson produced designs that were undeniably interesting. They provide a stylized, almost caricatured look at one instance of early-twentieth century technology being applied to the field of public mental healthcare. His overuse of the Colonial Revival style of architecture applied to groups of cheerful, homey cottages and the simple engineering of their placement providing for courtyards with natural boundaries seems almost futuristic, yet historic. The clever use of connecting hallways and underground passages seemed ingenious, and the almost over-ornamentation of these designs appeared on paper to be almost perfect. The functionality of the campuses spoke for itself. An aerial view would provide just about everything one would need to get a good idea of the institution’s operational features.

  Map showing land purchases. Author’s collection.

  The Eastern Pennsylvania Hospital for Feeble-Minded and Epileptics (Pennhurst State School) in Spring City, Pennsylvania, was another institution that was created as a result of the Bullitt Bill. It, too, was designed by Johnson during the term of director Krusen, and it, too, featured Colonial Revival–style buildings connected by underground passageways. In fact, his design for Byberry differed only slightly from that of Pennhurst. Johnson’s designs for hospital campuses, despite their individual specific needs, all provided exactly the same feature: basic housing. Buildings in his cottage plans were named alphabetically in letters, a Johnson trademark. It is important to note that the origins of a well-envisioned municipal healthcare system, in accordance with the Bullitt Charter, provided Philadelphia with two separate mental facilities at Byberry, not one.

  The concept called for patterns of buildings, each designed for a certain classification of mental illness. Before advancements in medical science pushed this plan out of the realm of feasibility, Philadelphia succeeded in building two of these colonies. Under the rationalE of early twentieth-century medicine, the city built a colony for patients deemed “insane” and another for those labeled “feeble-minded.” The cartoonish cottages proved immediately inadequate. Their nineteenth-century design was great for a nineteenth-century population, but Philadelphia’s numbers spiked more in the decade after the First World War th
an at any other period in its history. In the shifting gears of a fast-growing city, the new old-fashioned hospital seemed like a joke. Its cottages were drenched by a deluge of unprecedented patient numbers and were naturally incapable of absorbing them all. But few seemed to realize that no institution existing in the United States—public or private—could have held up under such an impact.

  The city’s third attempt to break Johnson’s perpetual contract came in 1914. Congressman J. Hampton Moore, frustrated by the antiquated “new” hospital his city was forced to cope with, hired a team of architects to probe into Johnson’s career and architectural training. They turned up a muddled past. No proof could be found that Johnson had any real architectural training at all. Moore appointed John P.B. Sinkler as city architect and instructed him to work on plans for new buildings at Byberry. Meanwhile, his close study of the contract found that Johnson had no legal claim to the title of city architect itself. It stated that Johnson was to receive all work from city municipal departments that had existed at the time of the contract’s inception (1903). This meant that when the DPHC broke down into two departments, Johnson’s contract only entitled him to the work of one. The courts agreed, and Sinkler was placed into Johnson’s previous position. Johnson had no trouble opening his own architectural firm however, backed by Machine connections. The contract was still valid when it came to Johnson’s 5 percent commission, and he was sure to collect it.

  Situated near the existing 1908 tubercular pavilion, on the east side of the Lincoln Highway (now Roosevelt Boulevard), the East Group (later known as the “E” buildings for “East”) was the first of three projects by Philip H. Johnson for the DPHC at Byberry. The buildings were designed to house male patients. In the decade or so preceding any actual construction, the city’s hyped-up new hospital had been referred to simply as the “Philadelphia Hospital for the Insane,” as the new buildings had not yet received an official title. By the 1920s, they would become known as the “Philadelphia Hospital for Mental Diseases” (PHMD). The East Group, when completed, would consist of eleven buildings (including two crude workshops). The first four buildings to be constructed were buildings A, C, D and F, the four corner buildings, which were later labeled E-2, E-6, E-3, and E-7, respectively (see map on page 5). At the same time, the east power plant was slowly coming together. It was furnished with boilers and operational by 1918. The administration building for the East Group was ready for use by 1920. Two more dormitories would be added by 1924.

  The buildings featured two-story central hubs with one-story wings on each side. The central hubs contained main lobbies with nurses’ stations and bathrooms, and the wings contained the beds. They were not designed with day rooms, activity rooms or any other basic comforts of a proper institution, perhaps because at the time of their design, the agricultural therapy concept was still the driving idea. They would be situated in an H-shaped pattern with the dormitories placed in two rows and the power plant in the center to provide heat to the campus via pipes in underground passages capped on ground level by sidewalks. Running parallel to the steam tunnels were traffic tunnels used by patients to travel between buildings.

  The buildings were in the Colonial Revival style and were constructed of brick with granite capstones and lentils. The roofs were slate and the frames and floors wooden. The power plant for the East Group was connected to the kitchen and dining hall. The most ornate building in the East Group was the administration building. This was a two-story building with a grand front façade and sculptured cornerstone. It contained the offices and clerical department. The layout and idea of the campus was forward-thinking and, at the same time, sinister. The idea of patients traveling between buildings via underground tunnels to prevent the chance of escape was a show of the city’s attitude toward mental diseases and the stigma that existed about people with them. From the outside, the buildings looked residential and unthreatening, like a small neighborhood or a colonial town. The only other structures visible from the new buildings were the original farmhouses, many of which still housed patients.

  The West Group, situated near the northwest corner of Southampton Road and the Lincoln Highway, opposite the East Group, was designed to house the growing population of women who were building up on Blockley’s wards. These buildings, like the others, were originally designated in letters. In later years, however, as more buildings were added and the hospital’s land borders changed, they would be re-zoned as the C (central) group and labeled by number. They were more attractive but also more expensive. This new campus featured concrete floors and aboveground connecting corridors rather than dark tunnels for patient travel. The corridors were tall and well lit through large decorative windows. The pipes carrying hot water from the west power plant ran below the connecting hallways, and the hallways themselves formed the boundaries of well-groomed patient courtyards. The buildings were two stories high with open porches on each end of the second floor. They included dumbwaiters and laundry chutes, visiting areas and modern nurses’ stations, as well as patient activity areas in the basements.

  Johnson continued the same layout as the East Group. The dormitories were built in two rows for easy expansion and the addition of more structures. Between the rows of dormitories was the refectory, laundry, infirmary and administrative buildings. The power plant for the West Group, however, was located two thousand feet from the campus, across Southampton road. Unlike the east power plant, the new power plant was to receive its coal supply via rail car, and therefore a connection to the Reading Railroad’s line (later the New York Short Line) about a half mile from the hospital was necessary. After months of disputes between the city and the Reading over who should pay for this stretch, the city finally footed the bill.

  The East Group, 1950. Author’s collection.

  The first building erected on the West Group, as previously mentioned, was building I (C-9) in 1910. Next up was the laundry building (C-13) in 1911, followed by the two tubercular buildings, B and C (C-6 and C-12), and building H (C-3) in 1912 and the refectory in 1913. The board did not approve more funding until after the war ended. Then, in 1918, the four buildings at the outer corners of the West Group—buildings D, E, J and K (C-1, 7, 5 and 11)—were constructed. These four buildings were cottages for patients designated “High Grade Feeble-Minded.” The administration building was completed by 1923, and in 1924, buildings F, G, L and M (C-2, 4, 8 and 10), the cottages for “Low Grade Feeble-Minded,” were added. By 1925, the connecting hallways were in place, and the West Group, except for the infirmary, was complete (see map on page 5).

  But before the East Group was completed, Byberry’s first public murder hit headlines. In 1916, a patient named David Friedman easily found his way into the medicine closet in building D and, in amusement, mixed a bottle of formaldehyde into the building’s supply of medicine. This resulted in eleven patients almost poisoned to death and taken to the infirmary, with one dead. Friedman was placed back onto his ward with no reprimanding.

  After only a month, another situation arose. Five buildings on the West Group were completed but remained empty due to lack of heat. The contracts for the power plant had been awarded to Mitchell Bros. Company for construction. The work was about halfway complete when a political rift forced it to stop. Director of Public Charities Dr. Harte called for assistant director Alexander M. Wilson’s resignation, claiming that he was too involved with the Gang. After months of debate, Wilson decided not to resign, and Harte did instead. His replacement sat on the appropriation money for the plant, and it continued to sit, half complete. When Mitchell Bros. was finally contacted again to complete the plant, the company tried to rescind its bid, claiming it was $100,000 too low. More legal bickering followed, and two years had gone by since the original bid was placed.

  By December, when the bid was again worked out and the extra $100,000 agreed to, enough time had passed to allow costs to go up. Mitchell Bros. once again held up the contract. After an additional $50,000 was given, the work fi
nally proceeded and the west power plant was completed by November 1916. Under pressure to relieve Blockley, Krusen began the transfer of its patients to the new buildings of West Group. “With the heat and power plant completed,” said Krusen, “we can go ahead with actual relief of conditions at the old almshouse, and this is my purpose. Immediately upon completion of the plant, I will begin to move inmates from Blockley to Byberry. I shall send about six hundred there at once.”

  Krusen was not exaggerating. At the end of November, he moved three hundred patients and then another three hundred in early December. The new power plant was completed, and all seemed to be going as planned. But immediately after the patients arrived, it was discovered that the pipes connecting the buildings to the new plant had not been laid properly. The plumbing contract was held by William McCoach Jr., son of a Machine councilman and a Vare cohort. Having been “juiced in” by his Machine connections, most in city council were afraid to interfere with him. Meanwhile, the fate of six hundred female patients hung in the balance. An article in the Philadelphia Inquirer told of the rush to get the plant working before the winter in fear of the patients freezing to death in their new buildings. It told of the shoddy work done by the “Johnson clan” in the laying of the pipes, a charge that was actually unjust. It was discovered that some pipes were not even connected. McCoach had ordered his men to stop working at Byberry until he received a commission that he claimed was never paid. But McCoach was willing to use the freezing patients as collateral for his payment. He was sure he could get the city to pay at the threat of their safety. The city, however, fought McCoach, drawing out even further the patients’ discomfort. Eventually, the city caved and paid a second time to have the pipes laid properly. It was rumored that even donated funds were required to complete the work before the end of the month.