Moral architecture: the influence of the York Retreat on asylum design

doi:10.1016/S1353-8292(97)00003-8

Health & Place

Volume 3, Issue 2, June 1997, Pages 91-99

https://doi.org/10.1016/S1353-8292(97)00003-8 Get rights and content

Abstract

Institutional and architectural history places the asylum alongside the prison and other institutional types whose architectural characteristics emphasized confinement and control. This history obfuscates important differences in how ideas about treatment were represented in the particular design of these institutions; in other words, how the structure of a place became part of its discourse. What becomes obvious in nineteenth-century, asylum architecture is the influence of a small Yorkshire private asylum built by a Quaker, William Tuke, in 1796. The York Retreat, in form, solidified the ideas of ‘moral treatment’ in design and in turn assumed an exalted character in the design of late nineteenth-century asylums. Every researcher working in the field of the history of insanity acknowledges the importance of this event and its impact on the discourse of insanity for the century to follow. Few however talk about how its unique design was incorporated as part of this discourse.

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Moral architecture: the influence of the York Retreat on asylum design

Abstract

Journal of Historical Geography

Friends in York

A Sketch of the Origin, Progress, and Present State of the Retreat, an Institution Near York, for Persons Afflicted with Disorders of the Mind, Among the Society of Friends

Insane patients in London workhouses

Journal of Mental Science

Victorian lunatics: a social epidemiology of mental illness in mid-nineteenth century England

On the construction of public lunatic asylums

Asylum Journal of Mental Science

The Housing of Pauper Lunatics

The design and arrangement of lunatic asylums

Builder

Lunatic asylums; and the treatment of the insane

Builder

Lunatic asylums in Scotland

Builder

Lunatic asylums

Builder

Lunatic asylums

Builder

Concerning lunatic asylums

Builder

Asylums for the insane

Builder

Managing Madness: Changing Ideas and Practice

Uses of the past: American Quakers and architecture

Mental Hospitals

Uses of the past: English Quakers and architecture

Mental Hospitals

The Regulation of Madness

An asylum, or hospital—home, for two hundred patients: constructed on the principle of adaptation of various parts of the house to varied needs and mental states of inhabitants; with plans, &c

Journal of Mental Science

Suggestions and instructions with reference to; (1) sites: (2) general management of buildings: (3) construction of buildings: (4) plans and architecture: of lunatic asylums

The Construction and Government of Lunatic Asylums and Hospitals for the Insane

Madness, Morality and Medicine

The York Retreat

Pharmacological History

Madmen and the Bourgeoisie

Managing the Mind

Architecture's quest for sanity

Journal on Developmental Disabilities

The Fabrication of Virtue

Insanity and the Insane in Post-Famine Ireland