A Quick Visit to Bryce Hospital

In May 2008 my wife Dianne, son Amos, daughter Becca and her husband Matt Leon attended a Shores family reunion in Tuscaloosa. Before we left town we made a trip to the Bryce Hospital campus and snapped a few photos. 

Since patients were still in residence at that time, we could not go inside and were gently urged not to take photographs, either. The temptation was simply too great at the site of this Alabama landmark so progressive when it opened in the 1850s and so notorious in recent decades.

The hospital has a fascinating history and the University of Alabama Libraries Special Collections and the Alabama Department of Archives and History have much material print and digital related to that history. For some years patients published a newspaper, The Meteor; an issue can be seen here.
Also online is "Instructions on Bringing a Patient to the Hospital" dating from the late nineteenth century. 

Now that UA owns the Bryce campus, hopefully the original buildings and cemetery will be preserved.