Experts in the psychological field would never have predicted that we would do medicine rather than have them in controlled environments. The Norwich State Hospital for the Insane opened its doors in 1904 with ninety-five patients in one building on 100 acres.
One of the hospital superintendents was the first to believe that mechanical restraint of patients was preferable to medical treatment and he believed in hydrotherapy as a treatment measure. The hospital board quickly realized that the population was too safe. In 1905 two patient buildings were built and in 1907 a third door was built.
Thirteen buildings for patients were erected over the next eight years and in 1913 with a population of 998, an administration building, three doctors’ cabins, a carpenter and maintenance shop, a main kitchen, a garage, a laboratory, a staff house, and a workers’ “club house” were erected and an intoxicating farm and colony had been conducted.
Seven new buildings were built between 1920 and 1930 and another building was purchased for use by patients. In 1929, the hospital had a peak of 1,115 patients, while in 1930 the average daily census was 2,422. Here, in addition to the new patient facilities, two more doctors’ cabins, a house for the female employees, a painting shop, a conservatory, a superintendent’s residence, and two garages were built.
Tuberculosis patients were housed between 1931 and 1939 in a single patient building named Seymour housed between, which led to the closing of the “pines”. of buildings Two more doctors’ cabins, a house for male employees, and a nurse’s house were built. World War II had an impact on the staffing of Norwich City Hospital with the nursing staff reduced by more than 57 percent, with the loss of 30 nurses and 146 assistants. First time nursing services filled only 44 percent of the total staff.
The non-nursing staff increased by more than 32 percent while the daily census fluctuated slightly and reached 2,574 by 1945. In 1941, associations for Occupational therapies lead to students increasing the number of occupational therapists up to 28 by 1945. The average daily census rose to 2,799 by the end of 1950, while many new buildings were added to the hospital complex between 1950 and 1962.
At this time, every time a new patient building was built, the old building was closed. It is interesting to know that all the buildings now standing at Norwich State Hospital were never fully occupied at the same time and many of them were abandoned even before the hospital was officially closed. In 1956, the Lodge building was completed, which resulted in patients being transferred from Butler, Cutter, and Dix and these buildings were no longer used by patients.
The iron building that can be seen by those traveling from Foxwoods on Mohegan Sun using Route 2A was built in 1959. Also in that year, a power house, a laundry, a pump house, fifteen medical cabins, an incinerator, an Occupational Therapy building, employee buildings, a chapel, and a research and clinical laboratory were built.
At this point the hotel is projected over 900 acres.
In 1966, Dr. Martin was named Superintendent and his mission was to direct the quality of patient care, and he contrasted his mission by creating different programs. Martin wanted to increase patients’ independence and supported a popular administration and to meet the needs of patients and staff. At the end of 1972, the hospital’s population slowly decreased with only seven original buildings and one with the previous employees in use to an average of 1,148 resident patients. The total staff here has decreased to 1,248.
The number of decreases has been due to increasing admissions and discharges, less hospitalization time, the development of special programs alcohol and drug dependent. and increasing geriatric patients and crisis intervention. Administration operations moved to a section of the pot building with a small monumental sign “Nowic Hospital” with a blue cross sign on the grassy field. The frame of the sign still sits there today.
In late 1990, the hospital closed and the Southeastern Connecticut Mental Health Authority built its own building in Salmon. Later this closed down when those services passed to Uncas on the Thames Field Hospital.
An old housing complex that existed in the late 1980s when the hostel slowly moved into an old male worker near the Lake View building on the picnic table, walk down the field and pass the stone wall directly to the railway track.
If you take a left on the trail and walk under the Mohegan-Pequot bridge, you can see the old oil tanks to feed the power house which provided electricity in the field. The docks, I believe, also had coal used for heating the ship and had several lookout towers. In the September 20, 2006 issue of the Norwich Bulletin, State Archaeologist Nicholas Bellantoni said he had discovered 8,800 artifacts from the site on the hospital’s property.
Artifacts include several stone points for the use of arrows or spears, flails, stone drills, clay pots, fishing net weights. Bellantoni is in the process of setting up meetings with interested parties such as the town of Preston, neighboring Indian nations, developer Joseph Gentile, and the ” of public works, including property. The meeting would allow decisions to be made as to whether archaeologists can do more work on the site and analyze the findings in more detail.
Dealing with major work to include gentiles fitting in unspecified areas, allowing extensive archaeological work before building on a site or excavating a site to bury it for posterity. Artifacts are not the only things found on this site, however. A doctor who used to work in hospitals, the tunnels connecting all the buildings Why do you ask?
He claims that most of the captives, the arsonists, murderers, and chair-lifters, were tied up in tunnels and burned by the mountains and beaten by the auxiliaries. Victims of failed experiments by doctors and now there are ghosts that haunt these tunnels. He claims that these victims were abused in the tunnel under Salmon and that he is going to seek revenge from whoever comes down.
Is this true? We will all find out when the construction workers demolish these old buildings and tunnels as they create Utopia, a A $1.6 billion development featuring an amusement park, movie studio, hotel with convention center, retail area, and community arts college.
If he happened to dream that piety in heaven.
