Inside the hospital building at Norwich State Hospital.
Norwich State Hospital opened in Preston, Connecticut in 1904 as the Norwich Hospital for the Insane. Norwich was built as a self-sufficient facility with its own farm, bakery, laboratory, power plant, staff & doctor housing as well as a bowling alley. What began as a single building housing under 100 mentally ill patients expanded to over twenty buildings and 3,000 patients by the 1950's. The facility operated successfully until the 1970's, when the population of patients decreased and most of the buildings, with the exception of a few original ones, were closed. The hospital closed in 1996 and last year demolition began.