Restoration
Over the years, the owners have undergone a restoration of the main building. Their plan is to completely restore the entire building.
It seemed like about half the tour group thought this restoration and staging was an amazing plan. Then there was the other half, like myself, who find the authenticity of the decay and neglect more engaging. But that's my bias.
The staging felt very forced and the tour spent too much time focusing on this aspect. It does work very well for the doctors' and nurses' lodging, I'll admit. I do think they've done a lot of hard work and a good job on the restoration... but restoring the entire hospital seems too ambitious and inauthentic.
My worry especially is that the restoration and staging of the wards will gloss over the tragic history of treatment here. We all know what seems like torture now was not viewed as such back then, but I don't want to view the hospital through that time-warped lens. I want the modern interpretation and realisation about the savagery of historical mental illness "treatment". It wasn't sunshine and puppies. A beautiful staging of the rooms won't show the dangerous over-crowding, it can't show the suffering, it can't really expose those emotions, brutality, and tragedies in the same way an old room full of neglect and decay with peeling paint can evoke. If their idea of restoration is done like it is in the museum on the first floor with silly dummies and giant placards adorning the walls will only work with a limited number of people. Give people's imaginations some credit. I saw many people engaged by the history of the centre just standing in an empty, time-ravaged room.
But it's very unlikely I'll ever return so it doesn't really matter what I think, lol. I just wish I had visited in 1995 instead, and been old enough to do so. ;)
Restoration
Over the years, the owners have undergone a restoration of the main building. Their plan is to completely restore the entire building.
It seemed like about half the tour group thought this restoration and staging was an amazing plan. Then there was the other half, like myself, who find the authenticity of the decay and neglect more engaging. But that's my bias.
The staging felt very forced and the tour spent too much time focusing on this aspect. It does work very well for the doctors' and nurses' lodging, I'll admit. I do think they've done a lot of hard work and a good job on the restoration... but restoring the entire hospital seems too ambitious and inauthentic.
My worry especially is that the restoration and staging of the wards will gloss over the tragic history of treatment here. We all know what seems like torture now was not viewed as such back then, but I don't want to view the hospital through that time-warped lens. I want the modern interpretation and realisation about the savagery of historical mental illness "treatment". It wasn't sunshine and puppies. A beautiful staging of the rooms won't show the dangerous over-crowding, it can't show the suffering, it can't really expose those emotions, brutality, and tragedies in the same way an old room full of neglect and decay with peeling paint can evoke. If their idea of restoration is done like it is in the museum on the first floor with silly dummies and giant placards adorning the walls will only work with a limited number of people. Give people's imaginations some credit. I saw many people engaged by the history of the centre just standing in an empty, time-ravaged room.
But it's very unlikely I'll ever return so it doesn't really matter what I think, lol. I just wish I had visited in 1995 instead, and been old enough to do so. ;)