We’re coming out of Covid winter (please let this be true!) and I’m ready for more socially distant outdoor wanderings. I’ve been meaning to return to the Medfield State Hospital in Medfield, MA. The shuttered college-like campus of the former psychiatric hospital is one of the stranger places I’ve visited in the Commonwealth. A cloudy February day made for perfect conditions for being around eerie decaying brick buildings, and Aisha and Laura brought along their fancy cameras.
When I first visited Medfield State Hospital back in 2014, there wasn’t a whole lot written about it online. I can’t remember how I found out about it, but I got the sense that it wasn’t widely advertised that the historical landmark was open as a public park. Maybe that was to keep vandals away, or maybe because the hospital closed in 2003, only about a decade prior.
Seven years ago, the park was heavily patrolled and there weren’t many people there. One older woman who was hanging out there with her family and dog, was surprised we were going around taking pictures. She told us that she grew up on the campus, as her mother worked on the hospital staff cutting patients’ hair. She described a largely self-sustaining community of farming and trade work, patients and staff living all together on campus, like what’s described in this 1997 video, one of the few in-depth historical resources I can find about the hospital:
Seven years later I was pleased to read online that the campus was still open as a park, and I was curious how it’s changed, if at all. Well I observed at least one major change to the hospital campus and it was this: DOGS.
So. Many. Dogs. Big dogs. Little dogs. Dogs on leashes. Dogs off leashes. Dogs sniffing each others’ butts. Dogs sniffing my butt. Corgis and huskies and dachshunds and dalmations and very many mutts. That’s right—Medfield State Hospital seems to now serve mainly as a dog park. And everyone in Medfield must have a dog, because I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many dogs in my life (Aisha and Laura are in agreement with me on this—there were a LOT of dogs).
Besides all the extra dog poop, the campus is largely the same as I remember. The most prominent building is the chapel, with its wooden clock perpetually stuck at the wrong times, made famous by its pseudo-appearance in Shutter Island (2010). The brick buildings seemed mostly in the same condition, with their boarded windows and crumbling steps. Not all the pathways were plowed, just the main roads, but the snow was minimal enough for us to crunch through to go up to buildings (and get away when there were too many dogs convening).
Chapel at Medfield State Hospital. Leo DiCaprio was here (kinda).
Patrolling must be working because I saw little to no evidence of vandalism or break-ins. Every building is locked shut with large signs warning against unlawful entry and hazardous conditions. My morbid curiosity burns stronger wondering what the insides of these buildings must look like now after all these years. I imagine mold, mice, and asbestos. The few photos I can find online say to me that even rulebreakers don’t even dare trespass.
Someone or some people had decorated the campus for Valentines Day, hanging hearts on lamp posts and candy conversation hearts on the buildings. A strange choice, in my opinion. I guess that’s one way to lighten up a somber atmosphere of a former psychiatric hospital. But something about a decaying “Womens Convulsive Ward” saying CALL ME or TEXT ME just didn’t really sit right, but hey, I’m just a tourist.
CUTIE PIE. LUV ME. TEXT ME. says the former “Mens Untidy Ward” (“Ward for male patients who needed help with personal hygiene”) according to the campus directory
Speaking of the Women’s Convulsive Ward, that was something new I noticed this time around—each building was labeled with a number that corresponded to a map at one of the main parking lots. The map listed each building’s former purpose. If the map existed back in 2014, I don’t remember seeing it. Since we parked in a different spot, we didn’t even get to the map until we were over halfway done exploring the campus. I took a picture of it for reference as we toured the rest of the hospital so we could identify the buildings.
The Medfield State Hospital map and building directory at one of the main parking lots.
Another new addition was the presence of haikus on some of the buildings. A little sealed paper next to each poem explained that this was part of a larger town-wide Medfield Poetry Project put on by the Medfield Public Library, Medfield TV, and the Cultural Alliance of Medfield. Their goal is to “bring people together to enjoy the property and build support for future arts and cultural activities on the grounds.”
These little haikus were popping up all over the campus.
There were also quite a few sap buckets tapped into maple trees around the hospital campus. Taken together, these present-day details—the sap buckets, the poetry, even the candy hearts—made it comfortably clear that the hospital grounds are being watched over and cared about. The millions of dogs made that pretty clear too. I’m curious to know what will come of the historical hospital in another seven years.
Also, I apparently contributed an article about Medfield State Hospital for Atlas Obscura back when I first visited. I was reading the article when researching this adventure and was like, “Hey I wrote this?!” Ha.