Полная история государственной больницы Южной Каролины — самая печально известная психиатрическая...

The South Carolina State House and the South Carolina Lunatic Asylum sat less than a mile apart in downtown Columbia. For nearly two hundred years, the legislature chose not to look. Founded in 1821, Bull Street was among the first state-funded mental institutions in America. Designed by Robert Mills, the architect of the Washington Monument, it was built on Enlightenment ideals of humane care. The original building had fireproof ceilings, central heating, and a rooftop garden. The vision was genuine. The funding never was. This documentary covers the complete story. The founding by legislators Samuel Farrow and William Crafts. The massive Babcock Building, built over twenty-seven years on the Kirkbride plan, with its iconic red dome on the Columbia skyline. The segregated wards that sent Black patients to the worst buildings on campus and later to a separate facility miles away. The chronic overcrowding that pushed the population past 6,600. The pellagra epidemic that killed patients because the legislature wouldn't fund a decent diet. The 1909 investigation that documented bones surfacing from overcrowded graves. The 1985 Department of Justice finding that conditions were "flagrantly unconstitutional." The patient labor that kept the institution running for free. The fire of September 12, 2020, that collapsed the Babcock dome on live television during its conversion into luxury apartments. The nearly 9,000 patients buried across at least twelve cemeteries. The African American patient cemetery, holding between 2,000 and 3,500 people, that was bulldozed and turned into a golf driving range. And the 181-acre redevelopment that replaced it all with a baseball stadium, condos, and a food hall. The villain of this story is not a superintendent or a doctor. It is the South Carolina General Assembly, sitting less than a mile away, passing two centuries of deferred appropriations while the institution they created rotted in plain sight. These are the stories behind the iron gates. Not ghost stories. Not urban legends. The documented record, which is almost always worse. ⸻ REFERENCES "The Story" — Digitizing Bull Street, Digital US South https://www.digitalussouth.org/bullst... "History of the South Carolina Department of Mental Health" — SC DMH http://www.state.sc.us/dmh/history.htm Babcock Building — National Register of Historic Places, SC Dept. of Archives and History http://www.nationalregister.sc.gov/ri... "BullStreet's Babcock Building Stood Both Iconic and Infamous in Columbia Skyline" — Post and Courier https://www.postandcourier.com/columb... "History Booklet of SC's State Hospital Tells Stories of People Housed There" — SC Daily Gazette https://scdailygazette.com/2026/03/24... South Carolina State Hospital — Autopsy of Architecture https://autopsyofarchitecture.com/sou... "Dealing with Death: The Use and Loss of Cemeteries by the S.C. State Hospital" — Chicora Foundation (2001), Michael Trinkley and Debi Hacker "Moonlight, Magnolias, and Madness: Insanity in South Carolina from the Colonial Period to the Progressive Era" — Peter McCandless, UNC Press (1996) "The South Carolina State Hospital: Stories from Bull Street" — William Buchheit "People, Not Patients" — Historic Columbia and Able South Carolina (2023-2026) #asylum #bullstreet #mentalhealth #documentary #southcarolina #history #columbia #babcockbuilding #abandoned #institution #deinstitutionalization #thequietwards