Worcester State Hospital
305 Belmont Street
Continuing from last year’s list
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Clock Tower Building |
The Worcester State Lunatic hospital was the first hospital established by any state to treat mental illnesses. It was designed by Weston and Rand, architects, in a Victorian Gothic Style. Over 1,000 feet long, the main property contained buildings related to several phases of its development. The complex was heavily damaged by a fire in 1992 and has been boarded up since then.
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Hooper Turret |
Pre-eminent among the surviving structures is the Victorian Gothic clock tower building, which towers 250 feet above Lake Quinsigamond and is visible from a great distance. This was part of the administrative building of the Worcester State Lunatic Hospital, built around the year 1877. Built of ferruginous gneiss, a fragile stone that was quarried from nearby land, it is bordered with red brick, which provides stability. Ornamentation is done with granite. Other features of the building are a center-entry flanked by four story bay windows, a porte-cochere set on polished granite columns and brick window trim. Wings, which flanked the building, are 3 ½ stories high and receded in three stages. In addition to the main building, the hospital consisted of a number of other matching stone buildings in the same monumental scale. These included the laundry building, boiler room, stable, nurse’s home, attendant’s home, four doctor’s homes, farmhouse, S.B. Watson Cottage, two turrets and the Henry Prentice Cottage. The historic campus is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
A $250 million bond bill has been approved and the Massachusetts Department of Capital Asset Management (DCAM) will construct for the Department of Mental Health (DMH) the state’s first new psychiatric hospital in almost 50 years. The complex combines the staff and patients of two archaic mental hospitals presently located in Worcester and Westborough, and unites them on the grounds of the historic Worcester State Hospital on Belmont Street. The plan for the new 430,000-square-foot, 320-patient psychiatric hospital does not include any historic preservation of the existing buildings.
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Lincoln Building and Gage Turret |
For the past year and a half, a group from Preservation Worcester has been meeting with DCAM, DMH, the Massachusetts Historical Commission, Worcester Historical Commission, Ellenzweig Associates (architects), and our State Representatives in order to preserve portions of the historic complex, and to prevent them from being demolished when the new structure is built. Preservation Worcester continues to follow the future development of this site. We are not aware of any plans to incorporate portions of the old hospital into the new psychiatric facility and have adamantly urged incorporating historic preservation in the plans. Regrettably, most of the old buildings will be demolished. Other surviving historic sections which presently include the Clock Tower and Hooper Turret do not fall within the footprint of the current design for the facility. The Clock Tower requires stabilization for future use and other modifications to make it marketable. The Clock Tower is our top priority and we are advocating for a commitment for the stabilization and reuse of that building.
Preservation of these historic and architecturally important buildings is not even remotely likely to happen without state or federal support. With the funding now in place, it is imperative that historic preservation be immediately factored in the plans.