Brockville Psychiatric Hospital

The BPH site contains 28 separate buildings (1) dispersed over a landscape of approximately 120 acres, parts of the south half of Lots 1 and 2, Concession 1, Elizabethtown-Kitley Township (2) (Figure 1). The site has been developed along two axes. The first extends east-west along a prominent limestone ridge which nearly traverses the property east-west some 1,000 feet north of King Street East and which provides the location for the original grouping of hospital buildings. A second runs north-south, through the middle of the administration building (#25). The original buildings were arrayed symmetrically to either side of this line, which constitutes a viewplane south towards the St. Lawrence River. Figure 2 provides a description of the property with a list of its buildings by number and function.

These buildings are divided into two major groupings. The first set of structures are those visible to the passing public. They include a semi-circle of three storey red brick buildings situated along the east-west ridge. In the centre sits the Administration Building (#25), flanked in parallel on both east and west by the main asylum (#s 17, 18, 23, 24, 26, and 30, to which the originally independent units numbered 14/16 and 31/29 have been added), the cottages (now numbered 8/7, 12/13. 32/33 and 35/34), and two continuous-care hospitals (#6 and 36). A fountain is set in the lawn directly to the south of the main entrance of the Administration Building, a position which underlines the central focus of the composition as it overlooks the St. Lawrence River.

As the institution’s public face, this central semi-circle is joined by a second set of buildings situated in the corner of the property where formal fencing along its south and west boundaries meets. This set is made up of the reception hospital (#41, now called Elmgrove), the medical superintendent’s residence (#42), and the former nurses’ residence (#38, now the Government of Ontario building). Slightly less institutional in focus, these structures are located in the midst of outdoor recreational facilities, a grouping which offers a low-key activity link in the area closest to community traffic.

The remainder of the buildings on the site are largely unseen by the public. They are located in two groupings. Service structures are situated to the north behind the central semi-circle of the institution where they are only visible from the road to the west of the property. A second group of agricultural buildings is located to the east, just below the lip of the property’s dominant ridge. Buildings in these areas are often simple and functional in design.

Located on a spacious and elevated acreage overlooking the St. Lawrence River, the BPH complex and its remaining surrounding grounds constitute an evolved cultural landscape characterized by the melding of pre-hospital, original asylum and later elements which, together, offer insight into a number of themes in the history of the province, most notably in the history of the evolution of psychiatric institutions.

A fragment of the original 219 acres purchased to accommodate the asylum in 1892, the ca. 120-acre site possesses an overall character, that of a formal, additive health-care institution. It combines housing and treatment in keeping with ever-changing contemporary methods of handling mental diseases, along with agricultural pursuits which satisfied both treatment and institutional needs (and which, incidentally, continued the apparent pre-hospital use of the land). The setting is a combination of wooded parkland for the “public face” and farmland, bush and scrub elsewhere.

Portions of the original property are no longer administered by the hospital. These include the 20 acre waterfront area between King Street East and the St. Lawrence River, transferred to the city in the 1960s and 1970s; a lot in the southeast corner of the property, north of King Street East, which became the site of a long-term care residence (Sherwood Park Manor); and a 60 acre section of farmland, located north of the railway.

There are strong reasons to believe that the asylum was located near Brockville for political reasons (3). Nevertheless, the nature of the landscape is often as important as the built heritage on a property of this size. This is especially true at asylums of the late-19th and early-20th centuries, where tranquil surroundings, land- and water-based recreations, gardening and agricultural activities played both therapeutic and institutional roles. Like many other such institutions, BPH was located in an obviously rural setting immediately adjacent to an urban centre. Its land gently rose from the river to the crest of the ridge on which the original administration, main and cottage buildings were placed, and then fell away to the north and east. The character of the land was judged exceptionally appropriate for such a facility, especially the presence of water that could be viewed from a height. Ontario asylums at Kingston, Penetanguishene, Whitby and Mimico were directly on the water, while other institutions at London, Hamilton, Cobourg and Whitby all had sites within several miles of the water.

In the type of “moral treatment” practiced in provincial asylums at the end of the 19th century, vistas of water and of rural landscapes were thought to possess a calming effect on the overactive and over-stressed minds of the mentally disturbed. At Brockville, noted the Chief Architect, Kivas Tully, “the view from the site in all directions is very extensive and very … attractive, and especially so to both eastward and westward, whence in both directions can be seen splendid and magnificent stretches of the River St. Lawrence.”(4) Following the tenets of moral therapy, patient activities such as sailing, walking, gardening and playing low-key sports, such as tennis and lawn-bowling, all played an important role in the cure of the disturbed. (5) Gently curving paths and roadways, extensive beds of flowers, fountains and other water features, garden buildings such as gazebos, and plantings of hedges, bushes and groves of trees were all important elements in the workings of an asylum, for they offered both an opportunity for treatment and an attractive setting for patient activities. The skeleton of this landscape survives, as do many of its individual elements, including the network of path- and roadways, the cast-iron fountain, the boundary wall, and many of its plantings.

As noted previously, the site has been developed along two axes. The first, which extends east-west along a prominent limestone ridge which nearly traverses the property east-west some 1,000 feet north of King Street East, offers a site for the original grouping of hospital buildings. From the second, which runs north-south, through the middle of the administration building (#25), the original buildings were arrayed symmetrically to either side of this line. The site’s dominant landscape component is that east-west stone ridge which rises some 154 feet above the river level. These two axes have imposed a cross-like orientation on the site that both inspired its original conception and anchored its long-term development. No other Ontario asylum possesses the advantage of having such clear and dominant axes – north-south to the river, and east-west along the ridge – as the Brockville institution does. Other institutions are oriented towards the roadway on which they are placed, or (when they exist) towards water courses, or are confused in their orientation, some buildings facing the road and some the water. (The institution at Hamilton is distinctive as well in its placement of the edge of the escarpment; its confusion is between the street front and distant views of the lake from the heights of the escarpment.)

At Brockville, the ridge, terraced and formalized, provides the location for BPH’s most impressive structural component, the hilltop range of original hospital structures, consisting of the administration, main and six cottage buildings, arrayed in a gently curving crescent on the crest of a ridge. This impressive grouping was erected in 1892-94 and has been expanded considerably since, notably during the 1950s, when floor space increased by nearly 50 per cent. The gently sloping land south of the ridge has evolved from an uneven sector of wild land into a parkland sector of mixed trees, lawns and plantings of a type often found on estates at the turn of the 20th century. Here a secondary grouping of structures were placed, including the medical superintendent’s residence (#42, built in 1896), the reception hospital (#41, now the Elmgrove Clinic, 1913-15), and the nurses’ residence (#38, 1931-32).

This impressive site has always been viewed by the public from the old Prescott Highway (King Street East), which runs along the southern edge of the site, about 1000 feet south of the ridge. Today, maturing trees obscure the original vista of the main grouping of buildings occupying the impressive terrace atop the transverse ridge. At the same time, this natural condition gives the institution greater privacy.

The institution’s function as an asylum (or place of refuge), the size of the site, and the facility’s placement outside what were then the boundaries of the city of Brockville – all these factors have combined to make BPH into a community, or island, set apart from the greater community of the City of Brockville and of Elizabethtown-Kitley Township where it is officially located.(6) The BPH has possessed an important influence on the surrounding community, rather than the more traditional heritage relationship, of the neighbourhood having a definable impact on the property under study (see “History” below). Local architectural historian Doug Grant has pointed out the similarity between the main building at BPH and at least one Brockville building, Publow Terrace (7) (Figure 3 [missing]). Since this row house was constructed after the BPH structure was completed in 1892-94, the hospital seems to have provided inspiration for its design

Though its function and design set this hospital apart from both the Brockville and Elizabethtown-Kitley Township communities, BPH has always been considered to be a local asset. From the beginning, reasons for this were both economic and psychological. Economically, the institution promised money in construction, employment and supplies. Emotionally, it was a source of local pride.

Brockville newspapers recognized that it would be impossible for regional builders to garner many of the contracts for so large a project – indeed, the main construction contract was awarded to the low bidder, Garson, Purser & Co. of St. Catharines at a bid of $241,438 exclusive of heating, water, sewage and outbuildings.(8) But local suppliers figured prominently in the awarding of subcontracts, and workmen from Brockville and area received considerable work from this construction project.9) This fulfilled the promise made by the Brockville Recorder that “the building of this institution will cause a considerable expenditure in our midst ….”(10) This input to the local economy continued in later construction, where Brockville area builders actually obtained the contracts for buildings such as the medical superintendent’s residence (#42, 1896) and the assembly hall (#15, 1910-12).

Employment was another important element in the relationship. While the senior staff almost invariably were promoted to posts in Brockville from other institutions, attendants and other employees were often appointed from among the local population. A total of 41 staff were selected during the first year of operation and, while places of residence were not provable in all cases, at least a majority of these individuals came from the immediate area. Historically, the institution was especially notable in the local context as a prominent employer of women, who normally found it difficult to find appropriate paid work outside the home. The asylum hired female attendants, laundresses, secretaries and switchboard operators, largely from the local population. The School of Nursing, established in 1903 and limited to female applicants until 1957, offered further opportunities for the training and employment of women. This emphasis on BPH as a source of jobs grew dramatically as the institution shifted from being a refuge to being a centre of psychiatric medicine. By 1972, the hospital had grown to be one of the region’s largest employers, with a staff of 840.

Supplies were a third area of interaction. Though asylums were designed to be communities unto themselves, the institution depended upon Brockville and area for items that it could not provide internally. When the hospital’s founding was announced in 1892, the Brockville Recorder, the local mouthpiece for the ruling provincial Liberal party, promised that “the annual expenditure in the way of local supplies and wages [after the asylum opened] would reach a large sum.(13) The expenditures were immediate: the institution hooked up to the municipal water, gas and, later, electricity and sewer connections and tendered locally for a wide range of items such as coal, wood, cloth, linens and other goods from Brockville and area suppliers. The economic relationship was a two-way street: the asylum also produced surpluses which were offered in the local marketplace. In only its second year of operation, for example, the farm produced nearly four tons of pork, of which little more than half a ton was required for institutional purposes. The gardens also produced tomatoes, carrots and other vegetables in quantities far beyond the hospital’s needs.

Like other institutions of its type, BPH has undergone considerable structural change during its history. Shifts in the philosophy of the treatment of the mentally ill help to explain some of these modifications, but politics and the economy often justify the timing of specific changes, for asylums were (and are) products of the political system. The establishment of the hospital at Brockville (rather than elsewhere in eastern Ontario) was, almost certainly, primarily a political decision, and most hiring and contracts there had political, as well as institutional, implications.

Finally, the construction of the asylum at Brockville was a source of enormous civic pride, and BPH remains an important regional institution in the eyes of local leaders. Historically, the choice of this area as the site for a major governmental institution – rather than its eastern Ontario rival, Ottawa – confirmed the city’s status as a regional centre of importance and reminded local residents of its advantages as a transportation hub with excellent connections by rail and water to Toronto and Montreal. Brockville was the capital of a region substantially more populous than Ottawa and was a major focus of manufacturing and commercial activity. Some considered it the richest urban centre in Canada.(15) Strategically positioned along the river, main highway and rail line, the asylum would be “one of the most prominent features that will be noticed by the traveller up or down the St. Lawrence ….”(16) The asylum was the only Brockville institution to merit a two-page treatment in the 1895 promotional publication, Brockville Illustrated.

BPH has a lively sense of its own heritage. It has a museum room, in which are displayed original architectural plans, photographs of people and hospital buildings from various periods, and artifacts ranging from official records to medical instruments to decorative elements from demolished structures. In preparation for its centenary in 1994, the psychiatrist-in-chief, Dr. R. Draper, carried out research into the institution’s past and prepared two academic papers on important aspects of its formative years: the place of BPH in the development of Ontario’s asylums, and the characteristics of a sample of early patients.(18) For the centenary itself, senior management authorized expenditures in support of researching the history of the institution and its place in the development of mental health care in Ontario. One result of this initiative was the production of a series of attractive and informative historical panels which currently line the entry corridor of the administration building and introduce both visitors and staff to the rich heritage of this institution. Another has been creation of a collected Book of Memories.

Briefly, “moral” therapy involved treating the mentally ill with humanity and compassion in a home-like setting, in contrast to earlier, “heroic” approaches to the handling of the mentally ill. “Heroic” treatment was based on the notion that the patient’s disturbed mental state could most effectively be rebalanced by physically shocking the individual back to normal. These “shocks” to the system included burning (blistering), bleeding, whipping and quick immersions in cold baths. The use of force and physical restraint were integral parts of “heroic” treatment, and buildings erected to accommodate its techniques most closely resembled prisons in their architectural character.

The rise of “moral” treatment is broadly connected with the influence of the American alienist, Dr. Thomas Story Kirkbride, who developed an overpowering influence in North America in the handling of the insane and, especially, the type of hospital design required to fulfill then-current mental health-care objectives. “Moral” therapy, on the other hand, believed that diseased minds could be returned to normalcy by care of the body coupled with the absence of stress and the imposition of a regular routine. “Moral” treatment saw the role of the institution as returning the patient to a state of normalcy (or morals) by providing a stable environment, heavily rule-bound, in which the individual made very few, if any decisions.(20) Set times for eating, sleeping, work and recreation, a regular routine of activities, and an absence of decision-making regarding the myriad of normal daily details, from dress to meal choices to bedtimes, would reduce the strain on the disturbed patient. Daily routines focussed on low-stress pursuits, always well supervised, such as gardening and other forms of horticulture; indoor activities such as sitting, simple games such as cards and checkers and, for women, sewing; and outdoor recreations thought to be relaxing, such as walking, boating, lawn bowling and tennis. These outdoor activities placed the patient closely in touch with nature, which was itself thought to be a great healer of diseased minds.

BPH is a late example of an institution designed according to the principles of “moral” treatment. It was a “mixed” asylum, placing those in need of acute care in the main building and relegating long-term, chronic-care patients to the six cottages, the three to the west allocated to men and those on the east to women. Wherever they were placed, patients originally lived quite comfortably. As Doctor R. J. Draper noted in 1992, early photographs of the interior of Brockville bear eloquent testimony to the influence of “moral” therapy. Heavy drapes, lace, potted plants, pianos, [and] comfortable furniture create an image more akin to a Victorian sitting room than a hospital ward. The day was spent at work whilst the evenings were given over to concerts, music, [and] dances. The preservation of patients’ dignity was paramount. There was very little restraint …. It should be noted too that the first patients all had individual rooms.

The external character of this early institution is illustrated in Figure 4 and Figure 5, while the original internal appearance of the administration, main and cottage buildings is shown in Figures 6, 7 and 8.

As a result of massive structural changes undertaken in the 1950s, it is now nearly impossible to see the design requirements of “moral” therapy in the present buildings at BPH. There are several earlier institutions, notably the current Kingston Psychiatric Hospital, whose first building was begun in 1859,(23) which appear to illustrate the architectural standards of “moral” therapy more clearly. Indeed, in his recent study of asylum design across Canada, the architectural historian James De Jonge concluded that “the former Rockwood Asylum in Kingston, Ontario … is the only other purpose-built institution from the pre-Confederation period to retain most of its original design qualities.(24) The demolition of the primary subject of his report, the former Provincial Lunatic Asylum in Saint John, New Brunswick (founded 1835, opened 1848) makes the Kingston complex unique, and of considerable significance in the national context.

BPH is one of several examples which, individually and collectively, help to illustrate the position taken in Ontario on issues relating to state intervention in personal matters. The British North America Act (1867) gave the provinces the power to legislate in the “establishment, maintenance, and management of Hospitals, Asylums, Charities, and Eleemosynary in and for the Province, other than Marine Hospitals.”(29) But the political culture of each province determined how this power would be exercised.

From the first efforts to provide for the needs of what were then called “the insane” in 1830, Ontario has broadly accepted the principle that the care of the mentally troubled was a provincial, rather than a private or local, responsibility.(30) This commitment to provincial support for the care of the mentally troubled (variously defined) rested on the notion that mental illness was not a personal or local problem, but an affliction for which the whole society bore some responsibility. This acceptance stands in contrast to the province’s traditional position on the care of the sick, which generally placed that responsibility at the local level, though sometimes with provincial financial support. Toronto’s acceptance of primary responsibility for the care of the mentally troubled had important structural implications: it led to the establishment of a series of institutions financed largely by general taxation and placed under provincial management.

The first of these asylums was located at Toronto (1839; a purpose-built asylum dates to 1850), followed by institutions at Kingston (for the criminally insane, 1856; purchased from the federal government, 1877), Fort Malden (1859), Orillia (for the feeble minded, especially juvenile cases; originally opened in 1859, reopened in 1876), London (1870), Hamilton (originally for alcoholics, 1876), Mimico (1890), and Brockville (1894). Before the Second World War, the system was expanded by the opening of asylums–which, after 1914, were termed Ontario hospitals–at Cobourg (for females, 1902), Penetanguishene (1904), Woodstock (for epileptics, 1906), and Whitby (1919).

BPH is a physically imposing example of Ontario’s decision to support a system of institutions for the care of those defined as “mentally defective” – whether through accident, disease, heredity or alcoholic abuse. In a province traditionally characterized as small-c “conservative” in its political culture, this acceptance of responsibility for personal affliction stands in contrast to a general reluctance to intrude governmentally in cases of individual need.

The BPH as an institution speaks directly to this theme: it is visually a piece of official architecture, designed by the office of the Chief Architect of the Department of Public Works. Its design is characteristic of provincial work in the field of asylum architecture. In its external appearance, placement and construction, the original structures (and their successors) were uninfluenced, to all appearances, by local design and building traditions. Instead, they embody provincial standards which, in turn, were derived from sources external to Ontario. A community unto itself, BPH consistently utilized architectural modes which were not commonly found in and around Brockville. The institution was, instead, an expression of provincial aspirations and prevailing medical theories worked out in a specific locale.