Bengal News Reporters
Since its construction, the Richardson Complex has been a source of fascination on the West Side. Right now visitors can only look at it through a wire fence. That may be changing soon.
On March 14, it was announced that a bill that would transfer ownership of the H.H. Richardson Complex from the State Office of Mental Health to Richardson Center Corp. was passed by a unanimous vote in the state Legislature. Assemblyman Sam Hoyt is very excited about this development and expects the governor to sign the bill into law within a few weeks.
“The building represents an opportunity for our region to showcase to the world our rich architectural heritage and at the same time revitalize the surrounding neighborhood,” Hoyt said.
According to project coordinator Monica Faix, plans for the two towers and
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| Richardson Complex project coordinator Monica Faix |
These plans were not made lightly. Several community meetings were held to gain input from residents and others concerned about the future of the site, and that input was invaluable in deciding what to do, according to Faix.
Harvey Garrett, executive director of the West Side Community Collaborative, served on the advisory board for the Richardson Center Corp.
“This is setting the bar for the appropriate amount of community input,” Garrett said. “They really took the time to hear everyone’s opinion, and as a result, no one is complaining. That’s something you don’t often see in Buffalo, and this should be done more often.”
The first phase of the state-funded $75 million project will involve restoring some of the original landscape design and building a new parking lot. One recent significant change to the property is the removal of trees. Faix said they had a tree specialist document every tree on the property to determine which trees were dead, which trees were in fair condition and which trees were of historical value.
“There was time when it was very hazardous walking around here with all the hanging branches that had not been taken care of after the October storm,” she said of the snow storm that hit Buffalo in 2006.
Monica Faix speaks about additional plans for the site:
Faix also said that they hope to have the main part of building open for tours by this fall. She says that the goal of Richardson Center Corp. is to preserve the integrity of the building. There is at least one video on the Internet in which a person illegally accessed the building in search of paranormal activity. Faix said that building is not being marketed as a haunted place out respect for the people who lived and worked there.
In the past, Faix said, the building has been broken into several times and even vandalized on occasion. Most commonly, the culprits are students from the college adjacent or young people in the area. These occurrences have subsided in the past year, however, due to increased security.
Sue Joffe, the Buffalo Psychiatric Hospital’s director of public information, said that the hospital, the Richardson Center’s next-door neighbor, is in charge of security for the empty building.
“At this point, our obligation is to make the location secure,” Joffe said. “The Richardson Center Corporation has a major responsibility for the building and there’s always concerns about break-ins, and we hope students will be respectful of the property.”
Buffalo State College is on the advisory board for the corporation, and has expressed interest in using some of the buildings in the future, Faix said. A college parking lot that is part of Richardson property will not be affected in the near future, but will be taken back eventually.
Edited by Mike Chiari and Tim Daniels
One aspect of this building is creating difficulties for designers of the remodeling project, and that is the interior layout. It is problematic because of its extremely wide corridors and extremely small individual rooms.
ReplyDeleteThe Richardson Complex was designed by H.H. Richardson, which is commonly known. What is not commonly known, is that the architect based his design on Dr. Thomas Story Kirkbride’s cutting edge (for the time) ideas.
Kirkbride believed that mental hospitals should be built with the intent of healing, rather than imprisonment, which was the norm at the time. This was based on the therapeutic Moral Treatment.
Over 15 hospitals were designed under Kirkbride’s influence, and many more were believed to be as well, but have been destroyed. Each of the buildings feature the same “bat wing” layout and, of course, extremely wide corridors with extremely small patient rooms.--Heidi Friend
The Richardson Complex is well-known for being a piece of innovative architecture among experts from across the country. There is also group people who will look at the image of the two towers and say that it is Arkham Asylum. A drawing of the asylum is featured in three pages of the book “Joker” written by Brian Azzarello and illustrated by Lee Bermejo Bermeejo. The story is about Batman’s arch nemesis depicted from a “henchman’s” point of view. In the story, the henchman is picking Joker up from Arkham Asylum. The illustrator confirmed that the he drew inspiration from the Richardson Complex, writing in an e-mail, “That building just SCREAMS Arkham!” -- Kristine Starkey
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