For Ohio University and Athens at-large, The Ridges, a complex of buildings that sits on the ridgetop overlooking campus, is one of the most recognizable images in Southeast Ohio. Built in the late 1860’s and opened in 1874, The Ridges, while no longer a psych ward, is still a pretty… interesting place.
From The Kennedy Art Museum, to the Childhood Development center, The George V. Voinovich School of Leadership and Public Affairs to defunct patient dorms with untouched walls still riddled with the scribbles of the ill, this mini-campus towering over the South bank of the Hocking River is so important to Athens’ identity that when it closed in 1993, the university acquired it so as not to let it be forgotten and go to ruin.
So, in the journey of this complex of buildings, trails, greenhouses, dairy barn, and orchard, how did we get from The Athens Lunatic Asylum all the way to OU’s The Ridges?
Athens Lunatic Asylum: 1874-1993
When the Athens Lunatic Asylum opened in 1874, its patients were mainly Civil War vets with PTSD (not known as such at the time), ward children, women who couldn’t quite handle raising 6 kids, tuberculosis patients, and violent criminals with mental illnesses. The first patient was a teenage girl possessed by a demon. In actuality, she had epilepsy. But it was the 1800’s, so it was a demon.
Fun Fact: in the first 3 years of operation, 82 people, 81 of which were men, were hospitalized for masturbation-induced-insanity.
Yeah.
Famous for The Kirkbride Method, which focused on compassion, calm and routine, the campus was a beautiful estate-like campus, carefully manicured and complete with fountains and the like. Dr. Kirkbride called his method the Moral Treatment; it was a comprehensive theory that determined the style and layout of each mental hospital built in this fashion.
The idea was promoting the humanity of each patient through creating a space where they felt valued and a part of something. Another big part of this, besides the physical environment of the 78-building, 700-acre campus itself, were the infrastructure that made it sustainable for a time.
Even though Kirkbride’s theory and plan of treating the mentally ill helped many hospitals focus their treatment methods during the dawn of… caring about the mentally ill, this method was largely abandoned within 20 years in the field of in-patient psychiatry at-large.
Historic Sustainability: The Dairy Barn off Richland Ave
An integral piece of the Moral Treatment was routine and responsibility. The Dairy Barn Arts Center is one such example. The Ridges used to have livestock and a dairy barn, which was run by the patients. It’s now remodeled and home to a non-profit that encourages local culture and the arts, but its first purpose was a piece of the “machine” that was Athens Lunatic Asylum. The campus also had a steam power plant to power the campus, an orchard, gardens, and greenhouses.
See? The residents of Athens have always been all about local sustainability. Pretty cool, right?
Netflix Was Here: Billy Milligan’s Many Personalities
If anyone watched that Netflix documentary that came out earlier this year, probably the most notorious patient ever to walk the halls of The Ridges was Billy Milligan, a case study in violent crimes and Dissociative Identity (read: Multiple Personality) Disorder.
Milligan was brought to The Ridges after raping, kidnapping and robbing 3 women on OSU’s campus in Columbus. It was at The Ridges, then called Athens State Hospital, that he was first diagnosed with DID, which got him off for those crimes on a “not guilty by reason of insanity” defense.
That’s, like a whole other article, though. Actually, just watch the docuseries –it’s pretty good.
Missing Margaret: The Infamous Cement Stain
We can’t talk about the history of The Ridges without talking about Margaret Schilling, a patient who went missing in December of 1978. Now, by this time, The Ridges was long past its height. It was too crowded, entire buildings were dilapidated, and some weren’t even heated. Margaret must have wandered around and got lost, because she locked herself in an empty ward.
She wasn’t found until mid-January of 1979; she had removed and folded her clothes in a neat pile, laid down and crossed her arms over her chest, and just… died. There is now the famous Cement Stain, a stain in the shape of Margaret laying down, confirmed to have been created by human decomposition. It used to be the main attraction of the haunted Halloween tours at The Ridges. But how haunted or not haunted The Ridges is is an article for another day closer to Fall.
1993 to Today: The Ridges’ Millennial Phase
When The Ridges closed in 1993, Ohio University acquired the buildings and property – except The Dairy Barn, which is owned by a private non-profit. By this time, the hospital was in nearly complete disrepair, as has happened to virtually every other Kirkbride-plan campuses. OU basically traded land to the Ohio Department of Mental Health in exchange for The Ridges, so it could revitalize the buildings and use them for other purposes.
Today, The Ridges is home to OU’s School of Leadership and Public Affairs, The Kennedy Art Museum, Printing Services, and Moving and Surplus. Some of the old nurses’ apartments now house staff and research labs. Other buildings have been converted into classrooms and offices. And some still sit untouched. The tuberculosis ward was torn down in 2013 because of the insane amount of asbestos in the building and all the kids who would break into it to look for ghosts and other supernatural stuff.
OU’s Army ROTC battalion often uses the grounds, and local members of the National Alliance on Mental Illness have gone to great pains to restore the 3 graveyards where nearly 2000 patients were laid to rest, many without headstones or any way to identify who they were.
In 2014, Ohio University started a plan for a total overhaul of main buildings on the hospital’s campus, a $16 million project that was completed in March of 2020, at the onset of the COVID pandemic. Part of these renovated spaces, in fact, have been converted to flex offices and conference rooms for departments at OU who have chosen to make pandemic-era work-from-home setups permanent.
The Ridges now also houses the OHIO Museum Complex, the OHIO Observatory, and The Ridges Land Lab. In all, in the last 7 years, OU has poured nearly $30 million into renovating and repurposing these exquisite Kirkbride buildings that are inextricable from the history of Athens or the university, and are one of less than 20 Kirkbride campuses still standing today.