Beautiful Decay
By Becky Cote
18 Jun 2008
Growing up I lived in a small town with not much to do. Every once in a while I would find some neat new place to explore that I wasn't supposed to be in. Not far from where grew up in central Massachusetts are the shut down buildings of what was once the local state hospital which was originally built in 1856 and officially closed down in 1993.
Originally built to house 250 patients in the then one building hospital, expansions had to be made to accommodate the growing number of individuals being admitted into the institution. By the mid 1900's the patient population reached 2500.
I am regretful that I had not explored this building more in my youth when I used to visit the town because over the course of the years since it's closing the buildings have been gradually torn down or renovated to make way for offices. Now after 15 years of demolitions and renovations only one of the buildings still stand where the original site of the hospital used to be. Across the street there are a few more buildings scattered around but mostly they were renovated for current use.
