WIP: Kirkbride style Insane Asylum Foorplan for Mystery Game

[Robbie]

Hey guys. I need some help...I'm working on a project that i can't wait to share with everyone (I have a lot of irons in the fire nowadays, snodsy I haven't forgotten yours either)...I'm needing to map out an old Kirkbride Insane Asylum.

There's tons of information out there about Kirkbride buildings (http://www.kirkbridebuildings.com/) and lots of floorplan images, but all of the floorplan images are single story floorplans. What I need is all floors...including the cellar/basement level and tunnels as well as attics and such. And knowing what the rooms were all used for would be helpful too. I don't care which hospital I end up using for reference, but if anyone has any connections and can find a complete floorplan of any Kirkbride style asylum, It would be super useful!

Trenton_State_Hospital_-_Kirkbride_Lithograph_1848.jpg

[Mouse]

I looked around a bit for you, Robbie, and I too was having a hard time trying to find anything that wasn't just the ground floor, but I think I've found a clue as to why this might be so.

This page here has a little bit about Kirkbride on it, and if you click on the thumbnail map there you will see a map of the cellar, and the 'basement or first storey'. That last bit being the biggest clue.

All floors seem to be laid out in the same unimaginative way. I think this is down to building cost and functionality, but it would explain why most hospitals only have a single floor plan that's readily available.

[Mouse]

This might help - a scanned copy of one of his books. It contains a couple of plans that you can zoom right into and see all the details.

[waldronate]

All floors seem to be laid out in the same unimaginative way. I think this is down to building cost and functionality...

An important part of functionality that's often overlooked is familiarity. If buildings of similar functionality are laid out in a similar way, then the major cost units (people) become more fungible because there is less training overhead as you move those units from one facility to another.

[Mouse]

Sexes are divided left and right.

Wealth is divided front to back.

So in the front rooms you have the masters and mistresses who went mad, and in the back rooms you have the servants who were driven nuts by their mad masters and mistresses.

[Robbie]

Awesome, I'll take a look at that book then. That looks super helpful.

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[Robbie]

Looks like that book is probably all I'm going to need! Good find mouse! Thanks! I'll post some of my artsy maps when I'm done with 'em. Yay!

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[Mouse]

You're welcome

I like investigating mysteries

Looking forward to the end result

[Robbie]

So the image in my first post (reposting here) seems to show a different story of the same hospital in the book...But I can't find the image online anywhere anymore for some reason, and it's in low resolution...confusing!

Here's all the plans if anyone wants to help me make sense of it:
Trenton_State_Hospital_-_Kirkbride_Lithograph_1848.jpg
Trenton_State_Hospital_Book1.jpg
Trenton_State_Hospital_Book2.jpg

Actually, looking at it closer, thats not the same floor plan now...So I think I can just focus on the two latter images and discard the first right?

[Mouse]

Its pretty similar overall, but at the left and right extremities it varies from the book quite a lot.

Do you think the plan in the book was a sort of a blue print for all the real hospitals that were built as a result of it, and that the hospital you chose just happens to have been built before the variations got too far from the original?

EDIT: In which case the one in the book, though it may never have been built exactly as shown, is like a classical "this is how it was really supposed to look" design. So yes - I'd say go with the second 2