Weston State Hospital

Today let's explore Weston State Hospital, now known as the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum! The nice thing about Weston is anybody can go explore it! The different tour options are listed on their web site. Rebecca and the nice folks at TALA are doing great things preserving this important historical structure! They're converting some of the wards back to what they once may have looked like.

Weston State Hospital was built between 1858 and 1881. It was built in the Kirkbride plan. Read all about Kirkbride buildings here! And get some more history about this building in particular here.

I went to Weston in June of 2008. I took too many pictures. The thing about any Kirkbride building is they're huge. No, "huge" doesn't begin to describe it! I could hardly wrap my brain around how big this place was! We spent almost an entire day in there, and still there wasn't time to see it all!

Just inside the front entryway of the Kirkbride

We also saw another ward building behind the Kirkbride, which had the most amazing metal staircases.

They don't build them like this anymore!

And we got to see the cafeteria, which was sadly torn down recently. But it was in terrible shape.

Another building I would have loved to see inside (but it was off-limits) is the TB building. Beautiful, as I think every TB building is! I did get some exterior shots though, and a few of the basement through the windows. And some creepy night shots, too:

flash makes everything creepy!

So I'm gonna try and find just a few of the millions of photos I took that day, and put them here in this gallery. I hope you enjoy them!

And finally, for those who are into orbs and haunting things, when I was at Weston I took the only 2 photos in which I've ever gotten "orbs" without using flash. I can't say there was anything creepy about this room, or any ghostly presence. The first time the Ghost Hunters did a show at Weston, they were very into this room because a volunteer said she was grabbed by something in there. I only took pics because I was told by our guide that this was the famed "stretcher room" of Ghost Hunters fame. There could have been something creepy there, or there easily could have been dust or a water drop on my lens. So I won't make any judgments.  I'll leave that up to you...