Willard Psychiatric Center (N.Y.)

By act of the legislature passed on April 30, 1864, the secretary of the State Medical Society, Dr. Sylvester D. Willard, was authorized to investigate the condition of the insane poor in the various poorhouses, almshouses, insane asylums, and other institutions throughout the state (except those required by law to report to the legislature), and to transmit the acquired information to county judges in the state. Each judge then appointed a physician to visit the institutions where the insane poor were kept, to examine their condition and treatment. Secretary Willard then reported the results of these inspections to the legislature. He died before passage of a law creating a new institution for the insane, but his work was recognized by naming the facility in his honor.

Chapter 342 of the Laws of 1865 authorized establishment of this state asylum for the chronic insane and for the better care of the insane poor, to be known as the Willard Asylum for the Insane. The board of trustees was organized on May 15, 1869, succeeding to the duties and powers of the commissioners and former trustees previously charged with building the asylum at the State Agricultural College Farm at Ovid, Seneca County. The asylum was modeled on the State Lunatic Asylum at Utica, which had been organized nearly two decades earlier (Chapter 135 of the Laws of 1842). Subsequent legislation appointed successors to the Willard Asylum trustees (Laws of 1869, Chapter 822), and provided appropriations for salaries, fixed the rate for patients' board, and set the terms of the trustees (Laws of 1872, Chapter 541).

...