The Encyclopedia Americana (1920)/Insane Asylums, Cottage System or Village Plan

INSANE ASYLUMS, Cottage System or Village Plan. A form of construction for insane asylums and charitable institutions, in which large buildings are replaced by detached cottages. The cottages vary in size from those which will accommodate six to a dozen patients to larger ones which will accommodate 20 or more. They are usually constructed either in groups or along streets and avenues as a village. In the former, the several groups are given up to a particular industry as a farm group, where the patients are employed at farming, and others, as the garden, the brick yard, shop industries, etc., all of these being a part of one institution on a single large estate. In the village plan the institution is laid off in streets and avenues, and has the appearance of an ordinary village, each cottage having a flower garden in front, shade trees, etc. In either plan, there is conveniently located near the centre of the plant an administration building, a hospital for the sick and those requiring special care, a bakery, a laundry and other utility buildings. The cottages may be constructed of wood or other material, and the cost of construction is small as compared with the old plan of asylum construction. It is, besides, more homelike, more convenient for administration and permits of indefinite expansion. Some of the best-known institutions constructed on this plan are Alt-Scherbitz near Leipzig; Gabersee near Munich, Germany; the Saint Lawrence State Hospital at Ogdensburg, N. Y., and the Craig Colony for Epileptics at Sonyea, N. Y.