In the middle of the 19th century New York State had reached a tipping point. In a misguided attempt at compassion it realized there would need to be a solution to poverty and mental illness that didn’t involve jails, hence the asylum system was born. Willard, located on the eastern shore of Seneca Lake outside of Ovid, opened in October 1869, and didn’t completely close until 1995.

I planned a trip to Willard for personal reasons. My great-grandmother was admitted there in 1918 for postpartum depression. She ultimately spent the rest of her short life there, dying very young in 1925. I made the trip to try to understand her final years; though she was written off in the outside world, her 7 years there were very real, and I had hoped she was able to find peace in an otherwise horrible situation.

Tours of the campus have been offered in the past, but this was supposedly the first one to be promoted via Facebook and they were not prepared for the overwhelming response. Some 3000+ people came to this event, forcing the organizers to call in local police. It’s likely the last tour for the foreseeable future.

There’s a fair amount of material out there pertaining to the asylum, and I’ll link to some of it below. Following is a handful of pictures I took during the tour. Some were taken on the tour, and some (I learned later) were taken in areas that were not supposed to be on the tour. Oops.

Read about Willard on Atlas Obscura: https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/willard-asylum-for-the-chronic-insane

The New York Times made a short video about the unmarked graves: