Willard Psychiatric

 As a child, I heard about Willard and had a vague understanding that it was a hospital for people with mental problems. It seemed to be a common threat among parents in the area that “you’re driving me to Willard.” My mother had a twist on it that I was going to have her driving the bus. But what was this really?

Officially it was Willard Asylum for the Chronic Insane and was located in Ovid, New York. A group of Victorian buildings situated between Seneca and Cayuga Lakes in the Finger Lakes region, they were intended to be a better alternative for people with mental disorders and other illnesses that rendered people incapable of taking care of themselves.

And it was better. Willard was better than the almshouses of the early 1800s where people were crowded in together, both the poor and those in need of mental help with no regard to their condition or health status. Here at least doctors and medical staff attempted to treat and take care of the patients. Little was known as yet about mental health conditions, but they did their best to care for people that were often left at the doorstep and forgotten about by their families.

New York’s Surgeon General, Dr. Sylvester D. Willard was the main person behind the founding of the hospital which bears his name. Abraham Lincoln signed off on the proposal for a state-run hospital just 6 days before his death. The doors opened to patients in 1869 and they soon came flooding in. People in all kinds of conditions came from various places, especially almshouses across the state. One even arrived in a chicken cage! As so little was known about mental health in these times, it quickly became a dumping ground for undesirables. Both severe mental and physically handicapped people were sent here,. Others were sent for such things as “feeble-mindedness” and “nervousness,” As you can surmise, all kinds of people were sent to Willard in this time period.

I have come across letters where a distant cousin had been sent here. Her husband visited her once or twice, as well as her son, and thought she might be improving. From the husband’s descriptions, it sounded like she had what today might have been defined as severe depression, or perhaps she was showing the early signs of dementia. It is hard to decipher what is wrong with her. She seemed to have an appetite, yet needed to be fed, and this might be why she only stayed a little over a month or so before passing away, It is especially sad when you realize her family must have wanted her home, and although the doctors gave little hope, probably were hoping for some sort of recovery. Her husband describes the trains he has to take to get there from Auburn and the fact that he had to spend the night in Geneva.

The campus was built like many other Victorian-era institutes. There was a women’s side and a men’s side to it. Violent and non-violent patients were kept in separate areas. The administrative buildings were in the center. Originally it was supposed to be an agricultural college before Cornell University took over that role. Therefore, there was plenty of land that would be used for gardening and raising produce for their kitchens.

Although there were various entertainment facilities and patients were allowed to walk the grounds at will, it was very much a hospital. No patient could leave the grounds without permission. Electro-shock and ice bath treatments were used and there were operating theaters on the grounds. Likewise, there was a morgue and a cemetery where patients were buried with only a number to identify who was in each grave. My cousin was perhaps one of the luckier ones as she was returned to the family after her death and buried in the family plot next to where her husband would be buried upon his death in a few years.

The asylum operated until 1995 when it closed completely. Today the campus is shared by New York States corrections and a residential drug treatment program. Both areas are kept secure for obvious reasons and the old buildings can be seen just from the nearby roads that surround the old campus.