Blackwell's Island
The Blackwell's Island Asylum opened in 1839 and was New York's first lunatic asylum and the first municipal asylum in the United States. Blackwell's Island, which is now known as Roosevelt Island, also housed a number of other city-run structures, including a prison, a workhouse, and an alms house.
By the late 18th Century, Enlightenment philosophy began to permeate American culture and the medical establishment started to view mental illness as something to treat with compassion rather than punishment or mockery. The lunatic asylums in the United States were clean buildings with modern architecture, sprawling gardens, and were a source of pride for cities looking to boast of their humanitarian commitment to curing mental illness. Blackwell's was no exception: the main building was designed by noted architect Alexander Jackson Davis and 20 acres were set aside for landscaping and for patients to use for recreation and farming.
Asylum Tourism
Asylum tourism became a revenue stream for New York City, as well as other locales, but with a different goal than tourism of the past: the cities wanted visitors to see how humane and serene their facilities were, especially in relation to the reputation of places like Bedlam.
Ads were placed in tourist books in hotel rooms and in newspapers to visit Blackwell’s Island. While treatment and conditions were certainly an improvement over lunatic asylums in the past, the harsher areas of the hospital were off limits to visitors, and the city allocated limited funds for feeding and caring for patients, in comparison to maintaining the grounds and adding on to the facilities.
A listing in an 1871 Hotel Guests Guide for the City of New York describes Blackwell's Island:
"A visit to the several establishments on this island will well repay any one interested in the efforts for ameliorating human suffering.There are on the island, the Penitentiary, with its 500 to 1000 convicts, the Alms-house Hospital, the Lunatic Asylum, and the New Work-house,- which last is one of the most complete edifices in the country. It is built of stone taken from the quarries of the island. It is a very spacious building, being capable of holding about 600 persons; all its internal arrangements are very complete. The humane object of this institution is to separate vagrants from criminals, and to compel all to work who are able to do something towards their own support. The building, which is 325 feet in length, cost about $100,000. Tickets for admission to the island can be obtained of the Secretary of the Governors of the Alms-house Department, at the Rotunda, rear of the City Hall. There are various modes of conveyance thither,- by the Second of Third Avenue cars, and by steamer which leaves foot of Twenty-seventh street, East River, or by the Harlem stage from 23 Chatham street to Sixty-first street, and cross to the island at any hour."
The 1885 guidebook How to Have a Good Time in and About New York states:
"Blackwell's Island is a long narrow strip of land containing about one hundred and twenty acres, lying in the East River, beginning opposite East 51st Street, and extending northward. It belongs to the City of New York, which has built on it its public charitable and correctional institutions, such as the penitentiary, alms-house, lunatic asylum for females, work-house, blind asylum, charity hospital, hospital for incurables and convalescent hospital. The numerous buildings are all of imposing size. It takes nearly a whole day to visit the insane asylum and penitentiary alone, but it is well worth any one's time to visit these great institutions. Passes to visit the Island can be obtained at the office of the Commissioners of Public Charities and Correction, corner of Third Avenue and 11th Street, after which take boat from foot of East 26th Street."
One of the most notable asylum tourists to visit Blackwell's was Charles Dickens, who traveled widely across the United States in 1842 and published his account in American Notes. From his visit to New York City, he notes,
"One day, during my stay in New York, I paid a visit to the different public institutions on Long Island, or Rhode Island: I forget which. One of them is a Lunatic Asylum. The building is handsome; and is remarkable for a spacious and elegant staircase. The whole structure is not yet finished, but it is already one of considerable size and extent, and is capable of accommodating a very large number of patients.
I cannot say that I derived much comfort from the inspection of this charity. The different wards might have been cleaner and better ordered; I saw nothing of that salutary system which had impressed me so favourably elsewhere; and everything had a lounging, listless, madhouse air, which was very painful. The moping idiot, cowering down with long dishevelled hair; the gibbering maniac, with his hideous laugh and pointed finger; the vacant eye, the fierce wild face, the gloomy picking of the hands and lips, and munching of the nails: there they were all, without disguise, in naked ugliness and horror... The terrible crowd with which these halls and galleries were filled, so shocked me, that I abridged my stay within the shortest limits, and declined to see that portion of the building in which the refractory and violent were under closer restraint."
An article published in February 1866 in Harper's Magazine gave a comprehensive gaze inside the asylum to those unable to visit themselves. In his 23-page piece, W.H. Davenport offered his insider view of the institution, offhandedly mentioning in his introduction, "At no very distant date I had the misfortune to be a patient in the Institution of which this article treats. It is not necessary for me to describe the form in which my affection manifested itself. I only mention it here to show that I had ample means of seeing the details of the management of the Asylum (Davenport, 1866, pg. 273)." The author wants to establish to the reader that he is credible, but not insane.
Davenport spends much of the article doing his best to differentiate himself from his mental inmate past as possible, by dwelling on how clean the facility is, how well-fed the patients are, and how beautiful the architecture looks upon the island. “The cleanliness and neatness every where apparent always commands admiration. The white-washed walls and spotless floors show constant attention; certain of the patients, under the guidance of the attendants, sweeping and dusting the boards daily, and thoroughly scrubbing them once a week (Davenport, 1866, pg. 278).”
While the "Bedlam" style of touring to mock patients was in poor taste by this time, Davenport assures his readers that since he used to be "a madman", he felt "entitled to greater license than the ordinary pleasure-seeker (Davenport, 1866, pg. 279).” He does indeed take great license, noting that patients "exhibit every variety of ugliness of feature. It would seem, from a general survey of the inmates, that the demon of insanity prefers the most repelling abode (Davenport, 1866, pg. 279)" and, “If a painter wished to depict the Witch Scene in Macbeth he would here find the finest models (Davenport, 1866, pg. 279).”