Nostalgia & History > What became of the "asylum at Napa"?

Who would have spent the money to build all this?
Did it burn down? (Safe bet it doesn't still exist.)

https://digicoll.lib.berkeley.edu/record/211124?ln=en&v=uv#?xywh=-119%2C57%2C1506%2C855

Founded in 1875, Napa State Hospital is still in business as one of five state hospitals for the mentally ill.

Hakk

According to Wikipedia, "the Castle" was torn down "after World War II" (citing the Napa Valley Register): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napa_State_Hospital

That was quite a building.

Evidently "after World War II" meant mid-1950. The Sacramento Union said in May that the main building was to be demolished and 10,000,000 bricks put up for bid from "what is said to be the biggest demolition job ever undertaken in the West": https://cdnc.ucr.edu/?a=d&d=SDU19500501.1.7

According to the Napa Register, the last part of the old building, the central tower, was finished off with dynamite on September 23, 1950: https://cdnc.ucr.edu/?a=d&d=NVR19531211.1.30

Some might say this is off topic, but I found it interesting. Didn't know any of this before.

Looks like the hospital's RR station was called Imola. Here's a 1965 view and an engineering drawing from the Dome O Foam. 

1940 aerial from FrameFinder here: https://mil.library.ucsb.edu/ap_images/c-and-p/c-and-p_2-2.tif

---

---

Thanks for finding that 1950 newspaper article.
Been a long time since newspapers had articles
like that. Not to mention the pic.

Says Earl Warren found "intolerable conditions"
in 1943 -- so they had to destroy the building?
Guess it was just about where the present building is,
at 37.2781N 22.2670W.

The puzzle is how someone talked the 1870s legislature
into appropriating the money for such a monument.
Philanthropists build monuments to themselves, but
why would the state do it?

Mentioned in a few places was the problem of overcrowding at other state facilities when they decided to build this one. There might have just been one facility serving the area--in Stockton. Not sure if that was the only one in the state or just the only one the area around the Bay and Delta region. 

There were lots of state hospitals--asylums--built back then based on something called the Kirkbride Plan. There's a neat website that I first visited more than twenty years ago and I happy to find it still going: https://www.kirkbridebuildings.com/buildings/napa/

That website and uboat.net were my favorite way to waste time at one point. Later I discovered trains :). They didn't have newspaper sites or really decent digital collection sites for the various repositiories back then.  
 

New Jersey also had several "homes for the insane". One of the biggest was at Greystone Park, in what is now Morris Plains and Randolph. Several huge stone, very impressive public buildings.  The Morris County Traction Railway had its own right of way to the main building, and the Lackawanna delivered coal on its own spur up the hill from just west of the Morris Plains station.

Dorothea Dix (for whom Fort Dix is named) was a leader in the efforts for humane care

Do a Google search for "Willowbrook" for a story of how awful the conditions were in some of these facilities in New York. The documentary is narrated by Geraldo Rivera. This may have been the show that made his career, not sure about that. 

Here's an RR link:  The state hospital in Poughkeepsie (mid-Hudson Psychiatric Center) had its own branch line for coal deliveries. It was called the Hospital Branch and involved a switchback, just north of the famous RR bridge across the Hudson. I was involved in cleanup operations up there a decade or so ago.