Friday, February 26, 2021
Allentown State Hospital
The abandoned Allentown State Hospital, located in Allentown, Pennsylvania, is slated for demolition by the end of 2019.
Updated July 30, 2019 | By Matthew Christopher
The abandoned Allentown State Hospital in Allentown, Pennsylvania will likely soon be destroyed. On July 2, 2019 Pennsylvania's Governor, Tom Wolfe, signed a bill that authorized the sale and demolition of the site, another setback in an ongoing battle to preserve the property. It remains to be seen when this will occur but it's likely that by the end of 2019 the hospital will be razed and yet another stately example of institutional architecture will be tossed unceremoniously in a landfill.
Allentown State Hospital opened on October 3, 1912 as the Pennsylvania State Homeopathic Asylum for the Insane. It was built on an approximately 200-acre parcel on a hill on the north bank of the Lehigh River for a total cost of $1,931,270. With an influx of patients from nearby state hospitals, its capacity was quickly reached and almost immediately after it was built there were calls for expansion, including "a reception building for new admissions, a home for nurses, two buildings for tubercular patients, isolation cottage for contagious diseases, changes in the buildings for hydrotherapy and continuous bath equipment, dairy, barn, piggery, farm building repairs, and coal tramway from railroad to power house" according to AsylumProjects.org. Several other additional facilities were added to the campus over the next two decades including staff housing and additional wards; ultimately the campus would consist of almost 30 different buildings.
For its time, Allentown State Hospital was a modern facility and focused on providing the best treatments available. Patients were attended to by medical professionals and consideration was given to putting together comprehensive case histories to determine the best course of care. Remedies included bed rest, hydrotherapy, and exposure to fresh air; the facilities were also equipped to care for medical, surgical, and dental needs.
A postcard of the Pennsylvania State Homeopathic Asylum for the Insane, date unknown
Allentown State Hospital was typically ahead of the curve in mental health care. It was the first state hospital in the United States to discontinue the use of seclusion in 1998. The Mental Health Institute for Children was established there in 1930 and would be the only state facility of its kind for 30 years. Nevertheless, it suffered from the same lack of funding and overcrowding that plagued so many state hospitals; a 1968 Morning Call article noted that the state of Pennsylvania ranked 45th in its patient to physician ratio, and displayed a photo of a day room at a women's ward described as "like a living room at home" - but the photo above that one, of an overcrowded geriatric male ward, showed men cramped onto long benches "entertained only by their thoughts because of a limited program."
Increased use of pharmaceutical treatments and community-based programs doomed Allentown, as it did so many other state hospitals. The closure was contentious. The hospital employed 375 staff members at the time of its demise in 2010, and only 85 were transferred to positions at Wernersville State Hospital. In the years that followed the grounds and buildings were kept in nearly immaculate condition; until the heat was shut off around 2018 it was difficult to find the peeling paint and crumbling plaster that characterized so many abandoned buildings. The administration building, one of the more impressive examples of institutional architecture, still seemed as though it could be reopened or reused at any time.
Unfortunately, this would not be the case. Despite serving as the setting of M. Night Shyamalan's 2019 movie Glass and an offer by local developer Nat Hyman to buy and redevelop the property for $17.5 million without destroying the buildings on it, the state seems intent on tearing it down and then figuring out a reuse plan for the site. It's a sad, frustrating, and foolish end for a gorgeous, unique, and historically significant building when other adaptive reuse projects have proven successful. Then again, for state hospitals, this seems par for the course.
For more information on the efforts to preserve this site, visit the Allentown Preservation League's website.
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