A Psychiatric Milestone | Page 4

Society $12,500 a year for fifty years. This new building housed comfortably seventy-five patients, but ten years later even this proved inadequate in size and undesirable in surroundings. In the meanwhile a wave of reform in the care of the insane was rising in Europe under the influence of such benefactors as Philippe Pinel in France, and William and Samuel Tuke in England. Thomas Eddy, a philanthropic Quaker Governor of the Society, who was then its Treasurer and afterward in succession its Vice-President and President, becoming aware of this movement, and having made a special study of the care and cure of mental affections, presented a communication to the Governors in which he advocated a change in the medical treatment, and in particular the adoption of the so-called moral management similar to that pursued by the Tukes at The Retreat, in Yorkshire, England. This memorable communication was printed by the Governors, and constitutes one of the first of the systematic attempts made in the United States to put this important medical subject on a humane and scientific basis. To carry out his plan, Mr. Eddy urged the purchase of a large tract of land near the city and the erection of suitable buildings. He ventured the moderate estimate that the population of the city, then about 110,000, might be doubled by 1836, and quadrupled by 1856. In fact, it was more than doubled in those first twenty years, and sextupled in the second twenty. He was justified, therefore, in believing that the hospital site on lower Broadway would soon be surrounded by a dense population, and quite unsuited for the efficient care of mental diseases. The Governors gave these recommendations immediate and favorable consideration. Various tracts of land, containing in all about seventy-seven acres, and lying on the historic Harlem Heights between what are now Riverside Drive and Columbus Avenue, and 107th and 120th Streets, were subsequently bought by the Society for about $31,000. To aid in the construction and maintenance of the necessary hospital buildings, the Legislature, by an act reciting that there was no other institution in the State where insane patients could be accommodated, and that humanity and the interest of the State required that provision should be made for their care and cure, granted an additional annual appropriation of $10,000 to the Society from 1816 until 1857. The main Hospital, built of brownstone, stood where the massive library of Columbia University now is, and the brick building still standing at the northeast corner of Broadway and 116th Street was the residence of the Medical Superintendent. The only access to this site by land was over what was known as the Bloomingdale Road, running from Broadway and 23d Street through the Bloomingdale district on the North River to 116th Street, and from that fact our institution assumed the name of Bloomingdale Asylum, or, as it is now called, Bloomingdale Hospital. This beautiful elevated site overlooking the Hudson River and the Harlem River was admirably fitted for its purpose. The spacious tract of land, laid out in walks and gardens, an extensive grove of trees, generous playgrounds and ample greenhouses, combined to give the spot unusual beauty and efficiency. This notable work finished, the Governors of the Society issued on May 10, 1821, an "Address to the Public"[1] which marks so great an advance in psychiatry in our country that it deserves study. The national character of the institution was indicated in the opening paragraph, where it announced that the Asylum would be open for the reception of patients from any part of the United States on the first of the following June. Accommodation for 200 patients was provided, and to these new surroundings were removed on that day all the mental cases then under treatment at the New York Hospital on lower Broadway.
In this retired and ideal spot the work of Bloomingdale Hospital was successfully prosecuted for three-quarters of a century. But the seven miles that separated it from the old hospital was steadily built over, and before fifty years had gone the growth of the city had passed the asylum grounds. Foreseeing that they could not maintain that verdant oasis intact for many years longer, the Governors, in 1868, bought this 300-acre tract on the outskirts of the Village of White Plains. After prolonged consideration of the time and method of development of the property, final plans were adopted in December, 1891, construction was begun May 1, 1892, and two years later, under the direction of our Medical Superintendent, Dr. Samuel B. Lyon, all the patients were moved from the old to this new Bloomingdale. The cost of the new buildings was about $1,500,000. From time to time the original Bloomingdale site was sold and now supplies room, among other structures, for Columbia University, Barnard College,