User:Sruehl18/Richardson Olmsted Complex

The large Medina red sandstone and brick hospital buildings were designed in 1870 in the Kirkbride Plan by architect Henry Hobson Richardson with grounds by landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted. At the time of construction completion, the facility was formerly known as the Buffalo State Asylum for the Insane . The campus consists of a central administrative tower and five pavilions or wards progressively set back on each side, for eleven buildings total, all connected by short curved two-story corridors. Patients were segregated by sex, males on the east side, females on the west. The wards housed patients until the mid-1970s. The central administration building was used for offices until 1994.

The Richardson Olmsted Campus in Buffalo, New York, United States, was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1986. The site was designed by the American architect Henry Hobson Richardson in concert with the landscape team of Frederick Law Olmsted, landscape architect of Central Park in New York City, and Calvert Vaux in the late 1800s, incorporating a system of treatment for people with mental illness developed by Thomas Story Kirkbride. Over the years, as mental health treatment changed and resources were diverted, the buildings and grounds began a slow deterioration. In 2006, the Richardson Center Corporation was formed to restore the buildings.