Quarantine: September 2020

Our big adventure this month was a drive-in movie. But not just any drive in. This month, the Coolidge Corner Theater’s After Dark program hosted a 10-year anniversary showing of Shutter Island on the grounds of Medfield State Hospital (formerly Medfield Insane Aslyum) where Scorcese’s film was primarily shot. Medfield stood in for the fictional “Ashecliffe Hospital”, which was located on “Shutter Island”, supposedly somewhere out in Boston Harbor. In reality, it was here in the Metrowest.

We drove out early before sundown and spent the day wandering the grounds of the now-defunct hospital compound, which is open to the public. The buildings have long since been condemned and boarded up, but the grounds are safe and now functioning as a sort of historical park.

The hospital was originally designed to feel less like a scary insane asylum and more like a friendly college campus. It opened here in 1896 with a few buildings, initially serving as an overflow location for local hospitals. At its peak, it grew to over 58 buildings housing nearly 2,300 patients. About half of those buildings remain.

In 1914, the name was changed to Medfield State Hospital, as the Superintendent believed that calling it an asylum instilled a sense of hopelessness in patients.

The Chapel building (above) was the primary film location for Shutter Island, and an imposing false entrance was constructed on the side of the building here for the movie.

Interestingly enough, Medfield was an entirely self-sustaining community. The main campus was surrounded by hundreds of acres of farmland that produced crops and also served as a dairy farm whose herds supplied food and milk for both hospital residents and the surrounding townspeople as well. You can walk by the farmhouse and residential area where the head farmer and farmhands lived on property, up until the 1960’s.

For the majority of human history, mental health care was basically non-existent. It was until the 1950’s that psychotropic drugs were introduced and revolutionized the field, as well as the lives of patients around the world. When pharmacology entered the picture, it allowed patients to be treated safely and successfully, greatly lessening the need for institutionalization.

Medfield used this new medicine to develop a rehabilitation program that effectively treated patients, increased their ability to live independently, and led them through a vocational skill program so that they could transition back into the community. By the 1970’s, most of the patients here had successfully been discharged.

Medfield State Hospital closed its doors in 2003 and relocated the remaining 200 patients to other faciltiies. It’s been a ghost town ever since. While the town of Medfield owns and maintains the overall safety of the property, nature is left free to reclaim the space. Ivy is slowly covering many buildings here. Tree limbs and grass are inching across once-paved lots. Asphalt crumbles in the firm grip of weeds.

This dedication (below) is inscribed on a memorial at the front entrance, as well as a cemetery just up the road where hundreds of patients were buried. Field trip to that, coming soon.

After we left, I later learned that Mike’s stepmom worked at Medfield in the 90’s as a nurse. She has many stories about that time and I look forward to hearing them. It’s wild to imagine that this place was still functioning so recently.

Finishing our tour of Medfield, we masked up and walked back down to our truck and settled in for a night of socially distanced entertainment.

Drive-in movies are an absolute treat. There are so few actual drive-ins remaining across the country, but these pop-up screens are making them possible in an all new way. It’s my hope that after this pandemic passes, we bring them back in a big way and re-learn to enjoy the outdoors again.