Old Bryce Hospital: A List

I've accumulated a few postings on this topic, so it's time for a list!

Look What They're Doing to Old Bryce Hospital

Aerial View of Bryce Hospital in 1943

A Quick Visit to Bryce Hospital

Bryce Hospital: Some Photographs (1)

Alabama Photos of the Day: Sewing and Such at Bryce in 1916

Look What They're Doing to Old Bryce Hospital

I've done several posts on this blog about Old Bryce Hospital, the state's former giant mental hospital in Tuscaloosa that opened in 1861. One described a quick visit made to the site with several family members in 2014 just before it closed. Others take a look at older photos related to the facility, an aerial view in 1943, and 1916 photos of sewing and other activities by residents. This post shares some photos I took on another quick visit with son Amos in January 2023. 

Several years ago the University of Alabama purchased the closed hospital, and it is now undergoing extensive renovation for a welcome center, the theater and dance school and a mental health museum. You can read a recent newspaper article about the present status here. More history of Bryce can be found in this article. The renovated building is expected to open in late 2023. 

A few more comments are below. 

Changes in the building are immediately apparent as you drive up to Old Main. 

These two photos are from our 2014 visit and show the old portico. Construction began in 1853 but was not finished until 1859. Peter Bryce was hired as superintendent and the Alabama Insane Hospital finally opened with patients in 1861. The portico was not original and added later while Bryce was still superintendent. The structure was not safe and need to be replaced. 

Aerial View of Bryce Hospital in 1943

In a recent wandering through the Alabama Mosaic digital collections I came across this aerial photograph of the Bryce Hospital campus and surrounding area. The description reads, "From a report submitted to Governor Chauncey Sparks on November 9, 1943, by the Tuscaloosa Chamber of Commerce's Committee for the Location and Establishment of a Four-Year Medical School for Alabama." 

So what does all that mean?

In the early 1940's the state legislature began to look for a place to locate a four-year medical college. A two-year college already existed in Tuscaloosa, which meant that students had to leave the state to finish medical education. Naturally, the leaders in Tuscaloosa would want the school to remain there, and would promote Bryce as a large source of potential patients. However, the school ended up in Birmingham, where the huge Jefferson Hospital had opened in December 1939. The Medical College of Alabama's first four-year class began in September 1945.

The Alabama Insane Hospital opened in 1861, and Peter Bryce was chosen as first superintendent. He died in 1892 and in 1900 the facility was officially named after him. Bryce closed several years ago, and the campus was purchased by the University of Alabama in 2010. The site is undergoing major redevelopment and restoration.

Numerous photos related to Bryce have survived, and I explored a few of them in a 2016 blog post. I also wrote a "quick visit" blog post about Bryce in 2014. 

Prominent in the background of this photo is the Black Warrior River. 

Source: Alabama Dept of Archives & History 

Alabama Photos of the Day: Sewing & Such at Bryce in 1916

During the most recent Women's History Month in March I ran across an article by Liana Kathleen Glew, "Stitching Time: Women and Fiber Art in Psychiatric History." Low and behold, two illustrations she used have an Alabama connection. These two photos are from a Bryce Hospital album and were taken around 1916. 

In the 1840s American mental health crusader Dorothea Dix visited state legislatures--including Alabama's--attempting to improve the care of the mentally ill. The state responded with a law in 1852 establishing the Alabama Insane Hospital. Some 326 acres in Tuscaloosa were purchased as the site of the hospital; the facility opened in 1859 with Peter Bryce as the first superintendent. Eight years after he died in 1892 the institution officially became Bryce Hospital.

For decades the patients at Bryce, as at so many similar places around the country, were involved in work that helped sustain the hospital in the face of chronic underfunding. These programs also seemed to help many of the patients. However, by the end of World War II Bryce was so overcrowded and poorly funded that conditions reached a crisis. In 1972, a ruling in a federal court case changed psychiatric institutions around the country and many including Bryce eventually closed. The University of Alabama now owns the property and preservation and redevelopment efforts are continuing. 

The article by Glew cited above addresses the roles fiber arts played both inside asylums and in the wider culture outside. Sewing, knitting, weaving, crochet and needlecraft provided a way to keep female patients busy and contributed to the asylum budgets. She includes several examples of self-expression in these activities as well. 

A sewing room at Bryce

Source: Alabama Dept of Archives and History

Industrial art room

Source: Alabama Dept of Archives and History 

Bryce Hospital: Some Photographs (1)

The original structure of Bryce Hospital in Tuscaloosa is currently undergoing an extensive restoration; you can read about it here. The wonderful Alabama Mosaic site has a number of old photographs taken both inside and outside Bryce over the years. I've posted some here with comments below each one. There are many more, so I'll revisit this topic at some point.

These photographs are eerie in their appearance of "normalcy". The Alabama Insane Hospital, as the facility was originally known, had a long history of innovation in treating the mentally ill well into the 20th century. As the decades passed, Bryce developed the same problems as similar facilities--too many patients and too little staff and funding. In 1972 Bryce became the subject of a landmark lawsuit that changed mental health care in large institutions nationwide. 

In August 2014 I posted an item with a few photographs about a quick trip to Bryce. You can read more about Bryce Hospital here and its namesake Peter Bryce, the first superintendent, here.

In 1881 Joseph Camp spent five months as a patient at Bryce; his account has been published as An Insight into an Insane Asylum. In 1992 The Letters of a Victorian Madwoman, edited by John S. Hughes, was published and documented the thirty years a female patient spent at Bryce from 1890 until 1920. 

This postcard of the drive up to the front entrance dates before 1940.

This pre-1950 photograph shows the main entrance from a different angle and another building in the background.

A more prosaic view of some Bryce buildings, probably in the 1940's 

Two nurses around World War I

Male patients in the dining room in the 1940's

Female patients in the dining room in the 1940's 

A ward of hospital beds in the 1940's

Male patients in the reading room, 1940's 

Children's dormitory ca. 1950. There seems to be a patient in the crib at the lower left.

Inside the cupola of the main building

An aerial view of the hospital campus some time before 1980

An operation in progress around 1916

The "Recreation Hall" around 1916. Note female patients seated on one side, males on the other. Female patients are dancing with female nurses and male patients with male attendants.

The library, presumably for staff, around 1916

The records room around 1916. I wonder if any of these have survived.

A Quick Visit to Bryce Hospital

In May 2008 my wife Dianne, son Amos, daughter Becca and her husband Matt Leon attended a Shores family reunion in Tuscaloosa. Before we left town we made a trip to the Bryce Hospital campus and snapped a few photos. 

Since patients were still in residence at that time, we could not go inside and were gently urged not to take photographs, either. The temptation was simply too great at the site of this Alabama landmark so progressive when it opened in the 1850s and so notorious in recent decades.

The hospital has a fascinating history and the University of Alabama Libraries Special Collections and the Alabama Department of Archives and History have much material print and digital related to that history. For some years patients published a newspaper, The Meteor; an issue can be seen here.
Also online is "Instructions on Bringing a Patient to the Hospital" dating from the late nineteenth century. 

Now that UA owns the Bryce campus, hopefully the original buildings and cemetery will be preserved.