This is the second in a series about Pennhurst Asylum in Spring City, PA.
Part 2: Architecture of Abandonment
Some places decay silently, but the Eastern Pennsylvania State Institution for the Feeble-Minded and Epileptic shouts through its architecture. When I moved through the labyrinth of corridors, originally built in 1908, I became hyperaware of every shape, shadow, and failing structure. The buildings are a patchwork of styles — institutional wings, watchtowers, utility annexes — built from red bricks and now fractured by time. Ceilings sag, paint bubbles and peels, stairwells crumble, iron radiators stand as jagged relics. And, as I walked through the buildings doing research for my next novel, I prayed that there was no lead paint of asbestos floating around. (Note: the public spaces have been remediated and there’s lots of fresh air to keep the air free from debris)
When Pennhurst Asylum opened in 1908, it was not designed to be a place of cruelty. Its architecture reflected the optimism of an early 20th-century belief that environment could heal. Inspired by late-Victorian and Progressive-Era ideals, reformers imagined that orderly surroundings, access to fresh air, and structured labor could rehabilitate the “feeble-minded” and “epileptic.” The sprawling campus model, with buildings separated into specialized cottages, administrative buildings, and treatment wards, was rooted in what was called the “Cottage Plan”, a shift away from the massive, fortress-like Kirkbride asylums of the previous century.
The Kirkbride Plan, popularized in the mid-1800s by Dr. Thomas Story Kirkbride, emphasized long, linear wings radiating from a central administrative core, maximizing light and air circulation. These grand institutions were meant to be “moral architecture,” curative by design: light, space, and order were thought to calm the mind. By the time Pennhurst was built, this idea had evolved into a more practical campus approach with multiple smaller buildings linked by tunnels and walkways. Each structure served a specific population or purpose: medical treatment, occupational therapy, dormitories, and industrial training.
Architecturally, Pennhurst was a blend of Colonial Revival and institutional neoclassicism known for solid red-brick façades, arched entryways, symmetrical lines, and ornamental stone details. The buildings were stately but not ostentatious, intended to convey stability and compassion. In its early years, administrators believed that productive work and education could lead residents to self-sufficiency. The environment itself was meant to teach order, cleanliness, and self-control, or what reformers of the day called “moral treatment.”
But idealism cannot survive overcrowding, underfunding, and prejudice. As the population swelled far beyond capacity, the architecture that once symbolized hope became a mechanism of confinement. Wide corridors that were meant to carry light now echoed with cries. The small cottages designed for rehabilitation became wards of restraint. The very design that promised healing became the structure of suffering.
Walking through Pennhurst today, I felt that contradiction pressing in from every direction. The beauty of the brickwork, the symmetry of the arches, the elegance of the old windows contradicts what happened inside them. These buildings were meant to heal. Instead, they witnessed abandonment.
Then there were the tunnels. While walking through tunnels that run beneath the entire complex, I held my breath against the stench of mold and decay. The tunnels are dark, tight, echoing. The floors are uneven, with puddles of stagnant water, yet the air is cooler, damper, and charged. That kind of architecture speaks to endurance and failure, to containment and escape.
In gothic fiction, architecture often reflects inner states with walls cracked by loss, corridors that fold back on themselves, rooms that trap or isolate. Pennhurst has all of these. In one ward, I felt like I was in a cathedral of sorrows: vaulted ceilings collapsing, light bleeding through broken skylights, dust motes dancing in shafts of late afternoon sun. It’s no wonder gothic writers are drawn to such places because structures like Pennhurst carry memory, trauma, and silence… just as people do.
