The Nuthouse
This is Medfield State Hospital, located adjacent to the 1960s subdivision in which I grew up. If you stood where I took the photo in this post, turned around and took a short path through a narrow boundary of trees, you would come upon the scene above.
When I was a tween my friends and I used to sneak up there to gawk at the “tahds” in the “nuthouse.” The patients would be out in that fenced-in porch and maybe they would be muttering to themselves and pacing, or if we were lucky one of them might sing a weird song or yell swears at us. Better than video games!
Medfield State Hospital opened in 1896 in the heyday or creepy Victorian insane asylums. The number of patients peaked at 1500 in 1952, dropping to 147 patients in 2001, and finally closing in 2003.
The State is currently negotiating with the Town to set the parameters for a redevelopment of the site — a truly hugeass project for Medfield. The latest agreement calls for 440 units of housing, of which 259 will be affordable. The housing will be a mix of apartments, condos, and single-family homes, and some of the historic buildings will be saved.
Predictably, many residents are uneasy about all those affordable housing units, even though the project will push Medfield above the 10% threshold for the State’s Chapter 40B code. Chapter 40B allows affordable housing developers to circumvent local zoning if less than 10% of the jurisdiction’s housing is affordable, and it has been notorious for creating controversy in small towns.
Goodbye Nuthouse…
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Goodbye Medfield…