PLACES
Central State Hospital opened its doors in December 1842 and grew to its 13,000-patient peak in the 1960s. Once upon a time, the great hospital ran like its very own city. In fact, its location on the southern end of Georgia's Antebellum Capital, Milledgeville, is so large it has its own zip code. The thousands of acres once had a farm, servicing the campus kitchen, as well as a dedicated fire and police department. The entire campus sustained itself with a Central State steam plant, located not far from the main campus quad. Now, the majority of the campus sits uninhabited. As roofs fall in and ivy grows through broken windows, the Central State Hospital Redevelopment Authority hopes to renew the great institution into a functional, living campus once again.
Jones Building
The fading colors of the Georgia state seal are the only visible remnants of the Jones Building that whisper of times past. The faded red brick and weathered marble make up a neoclassical façade that now sits in the shadows of overgrown trees and crawling vines.
The once bustling 142,140 square-foot hospital is just one of many Central State Hospital buildings that has been left to ruin on the grounds of what was the largest mental institution in the state of Georgia.
Built in 1929, the Jones Building serviced the patients and employees of Central State, as well as the citizens of Milledgeville. Many were born here, in the rooms that sit unattended and subjected to open air and elements. Now foxes and birds find their own new life under the failing roof.
The hospital provided care for more than the patients housed on campus, as its knowledgeable healthcare professionals expanded their services to include employee families and local Milledgeville residents.
“I was born here in the hospital down the road,” George Echols said during an interview in the Powell Building. “My father was a psychiatrist on the staff for 45 years.”
Many did not understand that the hospital at Central State served more than just the mentally ill.
“I tell people I actually grew up at Central State Hospital. I was actually born in the Jones Building,” said Melanie Crittenden, one of Superintendent William Crittenden’s five children born at Central State. She even recalled having to correct friends who assumed her mother was a patient at Central State who gave birth in the Jones Building.
But now, windows are replaced by gaping holes, enticing wildlife and college students alike to enter and survey the history inside.
But signs of life still linger from a distance. Faded turquoise doors hang open on hinges in each patient room. “No Trespassing” signs signal danger to the curious. And the occasional car rolls by, slowing as its passengers crane their necks to glimpse the once great building.
The Jones Building saw 50 years of births, deaths, surgeries and the common cold. Now, the building closes in on its 40th anniversary of boarded-up windows and chipped lead paint.
Like much of the giant hospital, the Jones building once boasted state-of-the-art medical techniques and equipment. Doctors and nurses used steam chambers to sterilize their clothing and medical utensils, and a convenient morgue was located in the basement of the three-story building.
Central State’s deterioration distresses many of those who called the campus and the buildings home for years, especially Mary Lou Hauser, who started working for the hospital as a nurse in the Jones Building. Through tears, she explained that she hopes the facade of these grand buildings, especially Jones, can be saved.
“That was a lot of my life,” Hauser said. “It’s a shame to see it just fall down.”
The Central State Hospital Local Redevelopment Authority is currently seeking a brighter future for these buildings. Recently, a “Vampire Diaries” spinoff show, “The Originals,” filmed inside the cracking walls of Jones. Georgia’s growing film industry is just one way the Redevelopment Authority is hoping to revitalize the buildings that mean so much to the people that worked and lived in them.
Powell Building
The Powell Building is the most recognizable structure on Central State’s campus. Its metallic dome towers over most of the massive red brick edifices, and its pure white exterior routinely draws eyes to the heart of the more than 4,000-acre property.
Central State’s main building boasts four large antebellum columns in the Ionic Order style – smooth, cylindrical masses extending three stories from base to scroll-like volute at the final peak.
From above, the building resembles a “U” shape, a direct result of the 1850s campus expansion under Dr. Thomas
Green’s administration. After receiving $300,000 from the state of Georgia, Green connected the two original buildings with one main “Center Building,” creating what is now the immense landmark of past and present Central State Hospital.
The administration then moved into the newly built “Center Building,” complete with a large office for the superintendent himself. Two wings of rooms flanked each side of the column-and-dome-adorned center. Here, the main operations of the hospital were concentrated, specifically the living quarters for the growing number of wards at the institution.
Retired Central State employee Richard Brookins listed the Powell Building as his favorite on campus.
“It’s so full of history,” Brookins said. “I had relatives who worked here before my time in 1927, and growing up in the environment I did with mental illness, I learned a lot as a child. They would do 12 hour shifts for $28 a month.”
Powell also housed the displaced Cuban refugees as they fled Castro’s reign and found employment at Central State. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, many Cuban doctors defected to the heart of Georgia in hopes of finding a better, freer life as a staff member at Central State Hospital.
Many families lived in the apartments of the Powell Building while construction on their new homes on the main street of campus were completed.
Rita Judy came to Central State in the 8th grade because her father, who was a doctor. When her family arrived, their house was not finished, so they moved into the apartments located on the third floor of the Powell Building.
“My dad and mom had an apartment, and my brother and I had an apartment also,” Judy said. “So we pretty much felt like we were all grown up, and we liked it a lot.”
The Powell Building was the heart of the campus for more reasons than housing the offices of the superintendent and his administration.
Mary Lou Hauser, a nurse at Central State for over 30 years, recalled her first time on campus, complete with patients greeting her from the Powell windows.
The once active fountain in front of the building also drew crowds on sunny afternoons and Sundays. The
many children of Central State families learned to ride their bikes around the fountain and in the parking lot.
“Just in front of [the Powell Building] Sunday afternoons, we always loaded the bicycles up, and our daughters learned to ride their bikes around the fountain right outside,” retired Central State dietician Cyndi Berenguer said.
Her husband Carlos Berenguer, the son of a Cuban doctor working at Central State, remembers his teenage antics in the fountain with friends at night.
“As a teenager, on Saturday or Friday nights in the wee hours of the night, we’d come to the fountain and play around it,” Berenguer said. “Sometimes it would ice over, and we’d try to ice skate on it. And in the summertime we’d try to swim in it.”
The spouting water display became a hangout for members of all ages in the Central State community.
Whether a main destination for the community’s children or the home of the superintendent’s office, the Powell Building was and still is the epicenter of Central State’s large campus.
Brantley Building
Standing four floors high full of ivy and rust, the halls of the Brantley Building were once echoing with the sounds of nurses returning home from long shifts and giant industrial fans buzzing stale air into dorm rooms.
Now, every window and door is blocked with the yellowish-orange of plywood protectors. Few know how the inside has weathered in its years of closure, but many remember the culture of life within those plywood boards before the campus became a virtual ghost town.
Named for the 1912 Board of Trustees president, John T. Brantley, the smaller
and less ostentatious of the two buildings on the main square block housed hundreds of nurses and nursing students under the employment of Central State.
Set up much like a college dorm, the ladies of the Brantley Building were subjected to strict curfew rules.
“There was a building supervisor lady, almost like a housemother,” Mary Lou Hauser, a resident of Brantley, remembers. “You couldn’t stay out after midnight. You couldn’t have people in your room.”
Relics of the old way of life at Brantley still remain. From Thomas Field Road, you can see the bright yellow sign denoting the building as “Inservice Education Nursing.”
Vines cover the doorframes and stairs of what were probably fire escapes off all four floors.
Even the picnic area in Brantley’s backyard has seen better times. The cement of the beautifully adorned picnic tables and benches now sit in ruins.
“It really hurt my heart when they started closing
Central State,” Hauser said. “It makes me feel bad [seeing them in such disrepair as they are now].”
In an effort to preserve the building, crews have replaced the doors and windows with secured pieces of wood. While most of the surrounding buildings deteriorate, the Central State Redevelopment Authority hopes that these preservation efforts will save the Brantley Building and its history.
Male and Female Convalescent Buildings
Though falling down from lack of use and maintenance, Walker is the only one of the two mirrored buildings to be completely intact as its original construction.
On the other side of the yard, an eerily similar facade faces the Walker Building. The three-story smaller building on the road mimics the Walker Building. This building was erected in 1883 as the Female Convalescent Building. In 1949, the majority of the building was torn down to make room for a modern auditorium, which is still in use today.
When traveling around the main lawn of Central State’s campus, one might recognize two buildings directly across from one another that look similar from the outside.
The Walker Building sits on the eastern side of the pecan grove and was originally referred to as the Male Convalescent Building. Serving Central State from 1886 until its closure in 1974, the Walker Building housed 40,000 square-feet’s worth of male patients.
Both buildings initially resembled a letter “E” from above. Similar to Powell, the main portion of the building was in the middle with wings of rooms flanking either side.
Central State administrators decided to keep that main middle portion of the Female Convalescent Building because on the front bottom corner lies the original cornerstone for the “Georgia Lunatic Asylum” from its origination in 1883.
As Walker slowly deteriorates thanks to weather, mold and overgrown plants, across the grounds, the auditorium has recently
begun to see a brighter future. Georgia Military College, located just north of Central State, is in the process of purchasing the auditorium - one step closer to revitalizing the largest mental institution in the nation in its entirety.
Pecan Grove
Situated in the center of the main frame of campus, the Pecan Grove was once lined not just with rows of pecan trees but crowds of people as well.
The area served Central State as the main green area in the middle of the quad. Flanked by main buildings like Powell, Jones, Walker and Green, the Pecan Grove was the epicenter of campus life, where patients, doctors and family members could all intermingle as a united community.
“The Pecan Grove would be full with people, particularly if the weather was nice,” Chris Crittenden recalled.
“They had benches out there, and they would sit and come in the yard and visit. You got used to dealing with people who looked at the world a little differently than you did.”
Large annual events, like the Milledgeville mayor’s Christmas Parade and a carnival, all revolved around the most popular event venue on campus – under the pecan trees.
“They’d have these fantastic performances by clients in the developmental disabilities unit. It was just a big to-do,” former nurse Mary Lou Hauser remembered. “The clients were involved in the big programs. They’d get their wheelchairs
and fix them up like sleds, and they’d push them around, and they’d dance. You could just see the joy in their faces.”
The lawn was a front yard for many. Churches, wards and residential houses were all within walking distance to the massive field. For some, all that was required was a safe trip across a two-lane road on a nice afternoon to be at the social hub of campus.
The Pecan Grove has kept up its community-centered ways. Even as the surrounding buildings have fallen apart and been nearly forgotten by many, the Pecan Grove continues to serve as a main area for many Milledgeville events.
Runners have raced around the sometimes spooky roads in zombie 5Ks and color runs. Local radio DJs and other small businesses have set up their tents underneath the pecan trees in support of community events.
Even this year, Central State hosted a Celebration Day, inviting all who have any connection to Central State to come together, under the pecan trees, and celebrate what once was the largest mental hospital in the world.
Cedar Lane Cemetery
The land for Cedar Lane Cemetery is thought to have been acquired in 1850, during Superintendent Dr. Thomas Green’s massive campus expansion. The earliest found grave has been dated just four years later, in 1854.
But the cemetery certainly does not look like it once did.
Like much of Central State, few places have been left in their original state. Whether from decay, neglect or abandonment, Central State has seen more changes than the number of name changes in 175 years.
But Cedar Lane Cemetery’s landscape was disrupted by man rather than age.
In the 1960s, groundskeepers decided that the more than 10,000 metal stakes marking graves across campus were too much of a nuisance to work around. They then yanked the grave markers away from their mowing lanes and threw them into the woods.
The groundskeepers left those 10,000 graves forever lost, adding to the around 25,000 people who were interred on the grounds of Central State.
In 1997, the Georgia Consumer Council discovered and collected 2,000 of these markers and displayed them in memory of the lost graves at Cedar Lane Cemetery.
Even if the markers had been left in their original place, many would find it difficult to know whose grave they were actually looking at. Most markers do not include a name, date of birth or any other identification other than a post number.
Within the last decade, the cemetery has been placed onto the National Register of Historic Places, which identifies locations historically significant and worthy of preservation.
Visitors of Milledgeville and Central State can see the cemetery and stop at the gazebo for more information regarding the cemetery’s history.
Kitchen
Not only was Central State once the largest mental institution in the nation, but it also owned the largest kitchen in the world.
Prepped to feed over 13,000 patients alone, Central State’s kitchen was situated about two blocks south of the main Powell Building.
Many transitioned from neighboring Georgia College’s dietician program to work closely with the Central State kitchen, providing the best dietetic care for the patients at the hospital.
In 1974, Central State hired its first African-American dietician for the campus. Jacquelynn Nelson, started at Central State as a student dietician as she finished her food science degree at Georgia College.
Then, the dieticians’ offices were located in the central kitchen, where workers were producing “well-over 40,000 meals a day.”
Those workers were often found in the homes of doctors, administrators and superintendents on campus.
Two of Superintendent William Crittenden’s children recall vivid memories of cooking in the kitchen.
Vats of food were stirred with ore-like utensils. Thousands of eggs were cracked into giant mixers before breakfast.
“My job was making gravy for 12,000 people,” Tom Crittenden remembered. “There were these huge steam kettles, and you’d stir it with what was the equivalent of a boat paddle.”
The food was then loaded and shipped in trucks to the various departments across campus.
The Central Kitchen also included a bakery, cannery and ice cream shoppe. A campus meat processor, dairy and chicken farm also served the kitchen, keeping almost all services within hospital property.
“It was like a huge commune, sort of,” Crittenden said.
Crittenden’s older brother, Chris, also worked in the kitchen as a teenager. His job included cutting up chicken and making breakfast.
“Scrambled eggs for 12,000 people, now that’s a lot of eggs,” Chris Crittenden said. “You learned to break eggs with both hands, two at a time.”
Since the majority of the hospital’s closure, the kitchen has still remained in good condition. The Central State Hospital Local Redevelopment Authority is hoping to sell the space to a nearby college or large industry who needs a kitchen that can feed close to 15,000 people in one location.