The abandoned asylums of North America

Photographer Matt van de Velde documents the ghostly beauty of North America's mental hospitals that sit empty and threatened with demolition

Abandoned Asylums offers an unrestricted insight into North America's abandoned state hospitals, asylums, and psychiatric facilities (Matt van der Velde)

Scattered across the United States, rooms that were once home to thousands of mental health patients sit empty - ghostly relics of their former residents sit untouched and forgotten. The buildings are eerie, empty more often than not, with many awaiting their time to be demolished to make way for new homes. Before their history could be erased, Canadian photographer Matt van der Velde sought to document North America’s abandoned asylums with the vision of illustrating the dramatic societal changes in attitude towards mental health over the past 100 years.

An abandoned bowling alley at an active psychiatric centre (Matt Van der Velde)

A former infantry soldier in the Canadian Forces, Van der Velde says the project was born out of a natural human curiosity to see things that were typically closed off or kept hidden from society. Having struggled with depression himself, the photographer says he “found solace walking through the corridors and documenting the spaces” but remains acutely aware of the dark stories that haunt the buildings.

An antique wooden morgue fridge (Matt Van der Velde)

“What affected me most on a human and emotional level are the institutions that catered to children exhibiting intellectual disabilities in the eugenics era,” he says. “Most of these institutions were forced to close due to maltreatment, neglect and abuse.”

Asylum for the chronically insane (Matt Van der Velde)

“The histories of these places are always something that weighs heavily on my mind while I'm photographing their current state.” Published in his debut book, Abandoned Asylums, Van der Velde’s images portray the neglected spaces in an ethereal light.

Hydrotherapy tubs in one ward (Matt Van der Velde)

As well as offering a unique aesthetic beauty, the series draws attention to cemetaries and burial grounds within the asylums that have seemingly been forgotten, despite being the final resting place for thousands of unnamed patients. “Patients were buried in anonymity with nothing but a numbered grave marker,” he explains. “Trees have sprouted through graves and dislodged or buried markers, ultimately eliminating any sort of trace or record of who is buried where.”

A neglected asylum cemetery where 5,776 patients rest (Matt Van der Velde)

“Typically these cemeteries have 2,000-5,000 lost souls; and some are upwards of 10,000 people.” In an age where horror films have manipulated the history of mental health, many people hold the assumption that mid-20th century asylums were inherently “evil places, run by evil people”, the photographer warns.


 The autopsy theatre and morgue of Dr Walter Freeman, the "father" of lobotomy
 (Matt Van der Velde)

“In fact they were created with the best of intentions based on the medical and psychiatric knowledge of the time. The fact of the matter is that while some institutions certainly practiced abusive behaviours and thus have dark histories forever attached to their legacy; it is important to note that these were outliers and not the norm.”


 One of the wards and an example of a patient activity area 
 (Matt Van der Velde)

Several of the institutions featured in Abandoned Asylums have already been demolished, but the photographer hopes their worth will not be forgotten. “I think stigma and our overall understanding of mental health has come a long way,” he says. “I hope this book draws attention to their great historical and architectural value, as very little effort is being made to save them, repurpose them, or in the very least acknowledge their mark on society.”

Matt van der Velde is a 28 year old photographer based in Ottawa, Canada. Abandoned Asylums -– Jonglez Publishing – www.AbandonedAsylums.ca