Hudson River State Hospital

For 141 years, Hudson River State Hospital was home to tens of thousands of individuals suffering from mental illness. The facility grew from a 208-acre parcel in 1871 with seven patients to 752 acres with five dozen separate buildings containing nearly 6,000 patients in 1954. The main building was constructed on a Kirkbride plan, a treating philosophy centered around an ornate building of equal proportions staffed by employees who integrated dignity and compassion into health care. Famous architects Frederick Clark Withers and Calvert Vaux drafted the main building in 1869. The landscape was penned by Frederick Law Olmstead, perhaps best known for the design of New York City's Central Park.
Historian Joseph Galante is a former state hospital staffer and current graduate student of mental health studies at Hofstra University on Long Island, New York. Lynn Rightmyer is a registered nurse and graduate of Hudson River's nursing school, class of 1975. Out of Rightmyer's 43-year tenure as a nurse, 19 years were spent on the wards at Hudson River. Both Rightmyer and Galante are history curators with the Hudson River State Hospital Nurses Alumni Association (HRSHNAA), from which many of the archival images in this book appear.