A Psychiatric Milestone | Page 4

to patients. In September, 1792, the
Governors directed the admission of the first mental case, and for the
hundred and twenty-nine years since that time the Society has
continuously devoted a part of its effort to the care of the mentally
diseased. After a few years a separate building for them was deemed
desirable, and was constructed. The State assisted this expansion of the
Hospital by appropriating to the 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