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?
The Athens Lunatic Asylum, 19th Century: 1868-1899
The plans for the asylum were done by Cleveland architect Levi Scofield, and the grounds were designed by Herman Haelin, who also designed several other prominent grounds around the state. Ground broke in 1868. They designed the hospital based on the framework set in On the Construction, Organization and General Arrangements of Hospitals for the Insane, published by famed physician Thomas Kirkbride. Kirkbride campuses are easily recognizable by their gorgeous architecture, winged layout and curated grounds.
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.
The original asylum took up 141 acres and was set to house up to 570 patients. There were separate wings and dining rooms for men and women, and an administration building for staff.
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. This included campus infrastructure that made it sustainable for a time and provided the patients with opportunities to learn skills, have a job and gain social and professional skills. There was ice-skating in the winter, paths connecting the property to the town, boating in the summer, and more.
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 underserved communities, this method was largely abandoned within 20 years in the field of in-patient psychiatry at-large. In 1878, the hospital’s name was changed to the Athens Asylum for the Insane.
The Athens Asylum for the Insane: 1900-1944
The 20th century saw the rise and fall of in-patient psych hospitals. The Ridges was a leader in expanding the capabilities and programs available at these hospitals, and it was also one of the last to close after the ADA was signed in 1990.
The hospital and grounds grew throughout the early decades according to the Kirkbride plan originally laid out in his 19th century publication. Patients were treated with humanity, given jobs and access to the outside world. Community events took place there, rare birds were brought in to make the grounds more attractive, and infrastructure grew to the point where the hospital didn’t need outside farmers to sustain the grounds. In 1944, the hospital’s name was changed to Athens State Hospital.
The Athens State Hospital: 1944-1968
By the 1950s, the Athens Lunatic Asylum was comprised of 78 buildings on a grounds of over 1000 acres, including a dairy barn, tuberculosis hospital, several cottages to house additional patients, an entertainment building, and more. It cared for 1800 patients and was the largest employer in Athens.
At its height, society’s take on the mentally ill underwent a shift in the 1950s. People were realizing that patients weren’t necessarily dangerous. Plus, if they were, it was easy to get a lobotomy or electroshock therapy now. Yeah… it was the 1950s.
Regardless, this shift in perception led to the development of psychotropic drugs, which presented new opportunities for patients to manage their conditions unsupervised. It also led to a switch to the Custodial Method of treatment, which represented a shift from housing-based treatment to researched-based medical treatments. In 1968, the hospital was again renamed, this time the Southeastern Ohio Mental Health Center.
The Southeastern Ohio Mental Health Center to The Ridges: 1968-1993
In the last few decades of its life as a psych hospital, the hospital changed its name a bunch more times as this slow transition to integration-based treatments came into focus. In 1968, it became the Southeastern Ohio Mental Health Center, which promptly changed to the Athens Mental Health Center in 1969. In 1975, it became the Southeastern Ohio Mental Health and Retardation Center, then the Athens Mental Health and Development Center in 1980, then the Athens Mental Health Center in 1981.
Through the late 1970s to mid-‘80s, those 1800 patients dwindled to 200 when Athens Behavioral Health Care offered a more modern approach to in and outpatient care. In 1988, after OU had acquired the property from the state of Ohio, it was renamed The Ridges. The ADA passed in 1990, and The Ridges officially closed in 1993 when the last patients were transferred to Athens Behavioral Health Care.
Permanent Residents: The Cemeteries
A big part of The Ridges are all the patients that died there over the 120+ years it was in operation. The cemeteries attract ghost hunters and history buffs alike, and is now the interest of a genealogy and repatriation project.
In all, around 2000 people are known to have been buried in the three known cemeteries at The Ridges, including more than 80 veterans. Over 1500 of these patients – 700 women and over 950 men – are buried under markers engraved only with a number; the State of Ohio didn’t put names, birth and death dates on markers until 1943 for some reason.
The Ridges Cemeteries Project was started to restore the cemeteries grounds, including identifying those markers with only a number, identifying and locating families/descendants, and to replace numbered markers with headstones with data. In fact, in 2000, an elderly daughter of a patient named Viola Rapp had a family ceremony over her recently-identified grave.
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 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.
Currently, The Ridges Development Project is set to make some pretty drastic changes to this historic campus. Learn more about it in our article: What’s Going to Happen to Athens’ The Ridges?