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Under The Red Roof: One Hundred Years At Northern State Hospital
This well- researched book published in 2010 includes black and white photographs of the hospital and the property.
155 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2011
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
October 6, 2012
I was fortunate to see the Northern State Hospital campus for myself on September 15, 2012, when the campus celebrated its 100th anniversary and featured tours conducted by Job Corps students. It was a great opportunity to see the Spanish Revival style buildings and get a sense of the peaceful surroundings.
At the end of the tour I purchased this book, "Under the Red Roof" by M.J. McGoffin to learn more about the history of the hospital and the people who lived and worked on the grounds from 1912 through the 60's/70's.
"Under the Red Roof" features transcribed interviews of a wide range of people affiliated with the institution, and a few building exterior photographs. Most of the interviews are about day-to-day responsibilities of former staff and about how the hospital integrated with the surrounding Sedro-Woolley community. There are no sensationalized accounts, ghost stories, or anything like that, and any anecdotes about the patients are handled with respect.
Overall, this book leaves a reader with the impression that the hospital was doing great work and it's a shame the facility closed down. Personally I enjoyed reading it for the insights into a different era of psychiatry.
At the end of the tour I purchased this book, "Under the Red Roof" by M.J. McGoffin to learn more about the history of the hospital and the people who lived and worked on the grounds from 1912 through the 60's/70's.
"Under the Red Roof" features transcribed interviews of a wide range of people affiliated with the institution, and a few building exterior photographs. Most of the interviews are about day-to-day responsibilities of former staff and about how the hospital integrated with the surrounding Sedro-Woolley community. There are no sensationalized accounts, ghost stories, or anything like that, and any anecdotes about the patients are handled with respect.
Overall, this book leaves a reader with the impression that the hospital was doing great work and it's a shame the facility closed down. Personally I enjoyed reading it for the insights into a different era of psychiatry.
November 30, 2018
McGoffin relates her personal interest in Northern State Hospital with a rare sensitivity. Her middle name, Janicki, belies a family-relation contribution to the local Sedro Woolley economy and political backdrop, and she covertly alludes to the fact of her leadership on various boards in Skagit County. Still, when she recounts how she is turned away at the gate of the closed campus, outsiders will realize that this place holds untold stories from a relatively recent past. Now, Northern State Hospital might not be news to those outside the small Washington State community, but consider the reputes of notorious mental institutions such as New York's Bellevue and London's Bethlem (aka Bedlam), and the former Northern State Hospital, with over 2,000 patients at its height, can be counted among the more 'humane' of these examples. (DISCLAIMER: This reviewer works as an instructor at the Cascades Job Corps operated on the former hospital's site.)
McGoffin liberally adds pictures, current and historical, of the NSH site and describes how its expanse was planned by the son of Frederick Law Olmsted, who designed a great many parks, including New York's Central Park, around the United States. Olmsted himself ended his life in an asylum. When I think about Olmsted, my hometown of Buffalo comes to mind, where the landscape architect designed Delaware Park and the grounds surrounding another asylum there, the Richardson Complex, once a place of locked cells, screams and cries; recently remodeled into a 5-star luxury hotel.
The Northern State Hospital held as much drama as any other mental institute, and suffered from the same lack of understanding of mental diseases and dysfunctions, and, in addition, a lack of appreciation for the Pacific Northwest weather, materialized in the campus building's red tile roofs. Still, it is a testimony to McGoffin's intervention in finding and retelling the stories of those who worked and lived on site over the many years and iterations of its fall into disrepair, efforts to revive it's structures and purpose, and future viability. As I write this, the connecting Fruitdale Road has re-opened after a 9 year closure due to a road washout. A new SWIFT center sign has gone up next to a new roundabout near the entrance, which has a new gate. But these are facts outside of McGoffin's recounting.
Looking at the story around me, the author's telling appears to be a very accurate description of what went on (and continues to go on) here on the Hansen Creek floodplain. The value of this site to Sedro Woolley (named after cedar trees and sheep's wool, two industries here) still echoes with the construction and mounting of new ambitions. It's amazing to know what can take place in a hundred years time, and humbling to know in the next hundred, mine, McGoffin's and others will be names long unremembered in its steady history.
McGoffin liberally adds pictures, current and historical, of the NSH site and describes how its expanse was planned by the son of Frederick Law Olmsted, who designed a great many parks, including New York's Central Park, around the United States. Olmsted himself ended his life in an asylum. When I think about Olmsted, my hometown of Buffalo comes to mind, where the landscape architect designed Delaware Park and the grounds surrounding another asylum there, the Richardson Complex, once a place of locked cells, screams and cries; recently remodeled into a 5-star luxury hotel.
The Northern State Hospital held as much drama as any other mental institute, and suffered from the same lack of understanding of mental diseases and dysfunctions, and, in addition, a lack of appreciation for the Pacific Northwest weather, materialized in the campus building's red tile roofs. Still, it is a testimony to McGoffin's intervention in finding and retelling the stories of those who worked and lived on site over the many years and iterations of its fall into disrepair, efforts to revive it's structures and purpose, and future viability. As I write this, the connecting Fruitdale Road has re-opened after a 9 year closure due to a road washout. A new SWIFT center sign has gone up next to a new roundabout near the entrance, which has a new gate. But these are facts outside of McGoffin's recounting.
Looking at the story around me, the author's telling appears to be a very accurate description of what went on (and continues to go on) here on the Hansen Creek floodplain. The value of this site to Sedro Woolley (named after cedar trees and sheep's wool, two industries here) still echoes with the construction and mounting of new ambitions. It's amazing to know what can take place in a hundred years time, and humbling to know in the next hundred, mine, McGoffin's and others will be names long unremembered in its steady history.
December 7, 2022
Really interesting on so many levels - the care of those needing help, mental health treatments, community life, and the inner workings of our political system ... So much to inspire along with disgust us. It is a beautiful place and I hope it will continue to exist.
April 2, 2020
Some first hand accounts and good historical context, but nothing super gripping in this non-fiction about Northern State.
December 28, 2020
I walk my dogs at Northern State a few times a week and my great-grandmother was institutionalized there for a time, so it was neat to read the history from the point of view of people who lived it.
July 30, 2011
Under the Red Roof: 100 Years at Northern State Hospital, by M.J. McGoffin, 2011, Mary McGoffin Publisher, 156 Pages, ISBN-13: 978-0692013731, $16.00
“…wild-haired maniacs [or] skulking rapists lurking behind bush’s….,” describe common views of insane asylum patients in 1967, quotes Mary McGoffin in her debut nonfiction release Under the Red Roof. She quotes Dr. William Voorhees, superintendent of Northern State Hospital.
To foster public awareness, Dr. Voorhees hosted an open house at the asylum to encourage the public to “…come and see…” and learn their fears were baseless from “first-hand” patient experiences.
Although McGoffin’s doesn’t document the outcome of that open house, her cinematic writing and black and white photos, authenticate and vividly capture the 100-year-old campus, the era, the staff and the patients she writes about.
Her love affair with the “finest state mental institution in the nation” combines with her skilled and dedicated research to offer reader’s historical facts and first-hand accounts that read more like a one-of-a- kind novel, instead of a nonfiction book…
Full Review: http://tinyurl.com/452t7tp
“…wild-haired maniacs [or] skulking rapists lurking behind bush’s….,” describe common views of insane asylum patients in 1967, quotes Mary McGoffin in her debut nonfiction release Under the Red Roof. She quotes Dr. William Voorhees, superintendent of Northern State Hospital.
To foster public awareness, Dr. Voorhees hosted an open house at the asylum to encourage the public to “…come and see…” and learn their fears were baseless from “first-hand” patient experiences.
Although McGoffin’s doesn’t document the outcome of that open house, her cinematic writing and black and white photos, authenticate and vividly capture the 100-year-old campus, the era, the staff and the patients she writes about.
Her love affair with the “finest state mental institution in the nation” combines with her skilled and dedicated research to offer reader’s historical facts and first-hand accounts that read more like a one-of-a- kind novel, instead of a nonfiction book…
Full Review: http://tinyurl.com/452t7tp
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews