Design

There are places and settings that imprint themselves on our collective consciousness and become landmarks which we refer to for their geography, their history and their great evocative power.

Immediately southwest of Downtown Raleigh, on a high hilltop overlooking the city sits Dorothea Dix Hospital, still known to generations of North Carolinians as Dix Hill-its original name. The hospital's setting is remarkable for its deeply ridged picturesque terrain and for a magnificent stand of mature oaks known as the Grove, through which a series of curvilinear drives ascends to the stately buildings of the Dix campus. DorotheaDixHospital was North Carolina's first hospital to treat mental illness and neurological conditions when their causes were not well understood. The appropriations for its establishment came on December 23, 1848, from the North Carolina Legislature, which had initially refused to fund it. The legislature's reversal was the result of an impassioned plea by James C. Dobbins, an influential Fayetteville legislator, who, upon hearing of the appropriations defeat, hurried from his hometown and his wife's funeral to speak on behalf of the measure.

Dobbins' dramatic effort fulfilled a promise to his dying wife who had asked him to support the bill. Mrs. Dobbins had been befriended and cared for during her last illness in Raleigh's Mansion House Hotel by fellow guest Dorothea Lynde Dix, a crusading New Englander committed to improving the conditions for the mentally ill. She had come to North Carolina in the waning days of 1848 and prepared a county-by-county "memorial" of the state's treatment of mental patients. The Legislature's subsequent approval of some funding, initially about $7,000, marked the emergence of a notable institution and a remarkable landscape. Both the hospital and its grounds would become a proud and productive part of North Carolina's history, emblematic of the State's charge to serve the needs of all its citizens.

The so-called "asylum bill," as it was named, called for the appointment of six commissioners to select a site and oversee the construction of a hospital. The commissioners included Guilford County's John Motley Morehead (a former governor), Calvin Graves of Caswell County, Thomas W. Cameron of Cumberland County, George W. Mordecai and Charles L. Hinton of Wake County, and Josiah O. Watson of Johnston County. The site chosen was a 182-acre parcel about one mile west of the city with a good source of water, Rocky Branch, which flowed through the property. (The acreage, purchased from Maria Hunter Hall and Sylvester Smith, was part of the original 1700s plantation once owned by Col. Theophilus Hunter, an early settler and leader in Raleigh and WakeCounty.)

The Legislature continued to make appropriations and sponsor bond issues to fund the new hospital. The main building, designed by New York architect A. J. Davis, was begun in 1850. Davis' TuscanRevivalCenterBuilding, completed in 1856, measured 726 feet in length and featured a three-story administrative pavilion flanked by two three-story male and female dormitory wings. According to architectural historian Ruth Little, the entire structure was of stuccoed brick and constructed by some of the state's leading builders, including the Conrad Brothers of Lexington and Dabney Cosby of Raleigh. The building is described as the first public building in Raleigh to be heated by steam heat and lighted by gas manufactured from coal or rosin. The first patient was admitted on February 22, 1856, and over the next nine months, 51 males and 39 female patients were admitted.

A Strong Tradition

The hospital on Dix Hill was designed and operated to conform to the therapeutic theory known as "moral treatment," espoused by Dr. Thomas Kirkbride, head of the Institute of Pennsylvania Hospital and a founder of the American Psychiatric Association. Kirkbride, who was a friend of Dorothea Dix, emphasized compassion and respect for the mentally ill and advocated calm and pleasant surroundings, fresh air, and vocational and hand-craft work as part of their care and treatment. In his 1854 book Hospitals for the Insane, which was revised in 1880, Kirkbride noted that farming and gardening were particularly important occupations for patients. To this end Dix Hill developed ornamental gardens and landscaped its grounds with gazebos and walkways, and early in its life began a hospital farm that provided much of the food for the patients, staff and workmen. Patients often worked alongside the maintenance personnel, and even attendants and staff, in the gardening and farming operations. As a result of its somewhat rural location and the opportunities for patients to interact with other members living and working in the complex, Dix Hill became a close-knit and largely self-sufficient community-growing some crops, tending domestic animals, maintaining vegetable and flower gardens, landscaping the grounds, and enjoying community social events such as musicals and dancing.

The landscaping and the physical improvement of the grounds and the development and expansion of the farming operations continued at a faster pace than the construction of new buildings and infrastructure. Until Morganton's BroughtonHospital was built in 1870, Dix was the only state mental hospital and many of the improvements needed to operate the growing facility continued as annexes and additions to A. J. Davis' CenterBuilding.

In 1902 Dix Hill's new Superintendent, George L. Kirby, employed a graduate nurse to teach student nurses and attendants, marking the beginning of the Dorothea Dix School of Nursing. The inauguration of the nursing school coincided with a spate of new annexes to the CenterBuilding, or free-standing ancillary buildings near it, in the form of additional kitchens, cold storage rooms, a laundry, carpenter's shop and a boiler. Around 1914, Anderson Hall, a red-brick, two-story building with bracketed eaves and segmental arched windows, was built to house the nursing school and nurse's dormitory and marked the beginning of a minor construction boom for Dix Hill.

The 1920s saw the completion of the HarveyBuilding, an important example of a modern dormitory for the mentally ill. Other handsome additions to the complex included the stone Colonial Revival Doctor's House, a Craftsman bungalow known as the Gatekeeper's Lodge, the Dutch Colonial Superintendent's Residence and the Benner House, another Craftsman bungalow with a wrap-around porch. From the 1920s until the 1970s, Dix Hill continued to add buildings, mostly dormitories and administrative buildings to serve the growing patient population and the numerous state agencies charged with the management of mental health.

The evolution of the architecture and landscape of Dorothea Dix Hospital has been documented in two independent studies. The first is the 1990 National Register of Historic Places Nomination prepared by architectural historian Ruth Little to nominate the core site and many of its original campus buildings to the National Register, a kind of honor role of the nation's architecture and landscapes. Little surveyed and analyzed all the Dix campus buildings that were then 50 years old (built between 1856 and 1940), a criterion for National Register eligibility. In her study, Little determined that the property is of statewide significance "as a monument to the humanitarian effort to provide a therapeutic natural setting for the mentally ill." More recently, Cynthia de Miranda of Edwards-Pitman Environmental of Durham, looked at the entire parcel, buildings and landscape, that was the subject of a State-commissioned master-planning process to address the future of the property. "My inventory," says de Miranda, "looked at buildings, their relationships to each other and place in the landscape, and the landscape itself. The land was important to the mission of the hospital." The Edwards-Pitman study included a survey of the post-1940 Dix Hill buildings, many of which are now potentially eligible for inclusion in the National Register.

The de Miranda update was part of a comprehensive analysis of the approximately 315-acre property conducted by a five-firm consultant team commissioned by the Dorothea Dix Property Study Commission appointed by the General Assembly to plan for the future of the Dix Campus. Headed by the Charlotte firm LandDesign Inc., whose president, Brad Davis is a North Carolina State University-trained landscape architect, the team included Raleigh architectural firm Cline Design Associates; the Chapel Hill planning, engineering and surveying firm Ballentine Associates; the engineering and construction firm Kimley-Horn and Associates of Cary; Durham's Edwards-Pitman Environmental; and Warren & Associates, a Charlotte-based real estate marketing analysis firm.

Master Plan

The consultant team conducted two public hearings to obtain community input and prepared two alternative versions of a Dorothea Dix Campus Master Plan. In each case, the team sought to blend the preservation of the Grove and other key landscape elements and the retention and reuse of historic buildings with uses that would provide potential economic return. Entitled City in a Park-Mixed Use Concept, Alternative One features a combination of office and institutional uses to accommodate the traditional services of the Dix Campus-public health research offices, an assisted living center, a mental health vocational training facility, a children's mental health center-while adding an athletic field, an amphitheatre, a museum, ornamental gardens, open space and greenways, various residential uses, office space, and some limited neighborhood retail. Alternative Two, entitled Central Park, eliminates the mix of residential, office, and retail uses and emphasizes the continuation of offices for mental health related uses, with the addition of more park land, open space and greenways, as well as a community garden. Davis, a partner in LandDesign points out that an important component of both plans was the accommodation of consolidated Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) offices. "In Alternative 2 (Central Park), the DHHS offices become the primary use of the existing buildings slated to remain on the property," says Davis. "This was a program component required by the State." In each plan, approximately half of the Dix Hill property is dedicated to a public park.

In addition to the consultant study, the City of Raleigh, with other major stakeholders in the planning for the future of the Dorothea Dix Campus, developed a third alternative plan, which follows the theme, Points of Light. The plan places considerable emphasis on the property's potential for connectivity with other significant public destinations such as nearby Centennial Campus, the North Carolina State University Campus, PullenPark and the School for the Blind, and Downtown Raleigh. The Planning Department's alternative would also offer a variety of housing types, an outdoor performing arts venue and festival area, recreational opportunities such as athletic fields and gardens, and preserve some limited mental-health facilities.

One Man's Mission

As the discussion of this incomparable setting continues, citizen groups like the Friends of Dorothea Dix Park, a coalition comprised of 30 separate organizations, are weighing in about the future of the property. One impassioned citizen voice for the future of the Dix Hill property is Greg Poole Jr., a Raleigh native whose family's business, Gregory Poole Equipment Company, has served the region's construction equipment industry since 1951. After attending the public hearings to solicit input on the future of the property, Poole formulated his own vision for Dix Hill. "I realized that we had to preserve the potential of this extraordinary piece of land for all the people of North Carolina," says Poole, an admitted visionary. Poole's strategy is based on maintaining the property and all its buildings and acreage in tact, without threat of its being sold or otherwise transferred out of State ownership, until a Blue Ribbon Commission can be appointed to receive recommendations from private individuals, professional park planners and important institutional resources, such as NCSU and the College of Design faculty.

In order to secure the property, Poole is working to convince the legislature to designate Dix Hill as a Park District. "With this accomplished, we will have protected all the future options for developing a world-class space for the citizenry of the state and the CapitalCity," Poole notes. Poole estimates that a 10-year planning process would not be out of the question for such a project. "We're not suggesting making it a park now," says Poole. "That would be premature. Let's continue to maintain Dix Hill while we study other parks and find out what makes certain places so important to us all."

Marvin Malecha, Dean of the NCSU College of Design, views the Dix Hill property as a once in a lifetime opportunity. "It's really rare to find a property that is relatively environmentally pristine," says Malecha. "Often large parcels adjacent to downtowns have been factories or power plants or they are cemeteries or golf courses. Having the Dix property, with its Grove and interesting topography right Downtown is like being in a city in the 19th century. We can ask ourselves, 'What would Olmstead do?'"-referring to the famous landscape architect who designed New York City's Central Park.