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By: Lara Hammond
The Ensor building is a small, neoclassical brick building on the northern side of the Bull Street site. Architects Lafaye and Lafaye designed and constructed this building to be a multifunctional and progressive new addition to the State Hospital campus during the mid twentieth century, with the primary function to be a research laboratory.[1] Through its history and architectural details, the Ensor building demands significance.
The Ensor building began with the approval of the General Assembly in 1938 to build a research laboratory on the site.[2] Construction started that year and builders completed it in April of 1939.[3] Activities launched in the building on May 27, 1939.[4] However, the building remained unnamed until three years later.[5] It is unclear who was producing the funds for this project until July 27, 1942, when the will of Mrs. Grace Ensor Brown was probated and the South Carolina State Mental Hospital became the beneficiary of a her entire estate. Her will stipulated that the funds be put towards a research laboratory in memory of Henrietta Kemp Ensor and Joshua Fulton Ensor, her mother and father.[6]
Joshua Fulton Ensor was the second superintendent of the South Carolina Lunatic Asylum from August 5, 1870 until he resigned on December 31, 1877.[7] He declined his first offers of the position from the Governor and only accepted the job at the insistence of Dorothea Dix, who was famous for her efforts to improve conditions for the mentally ill.[8] Like Dix, Ensor was ahead of his time; he advocated improvements in care for the mentally ill.[9] A document by Inez Nolan Fripp recounting Ensor’s life from the SC Department of Archives and History described him as “a man of compassion, deeply interested in the mentally ill” and that “he instituted many improvements for their care and comfort. The SC General Assembly not providing adequate funds for maintenance, Dr. Ensor used his personal money for that purpose.”[10] Ensor obviously cared for the well being of the inhabitants of the Lunatic Asylum and his progressiveness and desire to provide patients with the best treatment possible made his name and legacy perfect for the Ensor Research Foundation later in the twentieth century.
In 1945, three years after Mrs. Grace Ensor Brown’s passing, the General Assembly matched the funds from her estate and the Ensor Research Foundation began.[11] On May 1, 1945, superintendent Fred C. Williams became the first director of research to the foundation.[12] Williams, like Ensor, was also passionate about improving care to patients of the State Hospital. The intentions of the Ensor Research Foundation from the beginning were to make improvements in mental health patients and health in general. During this time, the Ensor building housed research labs, a morgue, and the parasitology department.[13] The lab produced nationally-recognized, award-winning work and seemed to be very successful in its beginnings.[14] Ensor began to develop improvements not only important to the South Carolina State Hospital and mental health, but also to the overall field of medicine.
The architectural style also communicates a lot about Ensor’s role in the historical significance of the State Hospital. The neoclassical style of the building itself demands attention. The western elevation includes four brick pilasters with Doric style plinths and capitals. A rounded arch tops the front door. Also, brick pilasters line the southern facing elevation. The style echoes that of the Williams Building and demonstrates the resurgence of this American architecture during this time between the Great Depression and World War II. This style portrays hope, knowledge, and truth, aspects that define the future Ensor Research Foundation that would inhabit the building. The structure has a sturdy, weighty quality, and even though it is not very large, it communicates strength and endurance. Furthermore, the building’s style contrasts its neighbor to the south, the Babcock building. Babcock’s Victorian style represented hope and magnificence during its time of construction, however, the Kirkbride planned building that experts were so sure of in the nineteenth century, represented everything that did not work in the treatment of mental illness by the 1930s.[15] Ensor functioned as Babcock’s opposite. It never housed or treated patients. Instead, its function was to produce new knowledge for the improvement of the broader field of health in general. Ensor’s architecture reflects changing ideals in medicine, from relying on old treatments and procedures to employing new science and knowledge. Although Lafaye and Lafaye use the same red brick material, they produced a building with a totally new image. The Ensor building shows, in a time of great trial in mental health treatment, that there is only progress to be made.
The plan of the Ensor building also demonstrated its importance and its many actual and potential uses. The two-story building held its laboratory operations on the first floor and office spaces on the second.[16] Along with a restroom, the first floor contained a reception room, microscopic lab, pathologic lab, animal holding room, animal operating room, autopsy room, and five-body capacity morgue.[17] The second floor included six office spaces, a stenographic recording room, and a larger multipurpose space.[18] It is clear that those planning this building intended it to do a lot. Though Ensor represented a building constructed with a purpose in mind, even without its research function, it would still be useful to the overall site.
In 1971, the Ensor Research Foundation was relocated to the neighboring Williams building.[19] With the newly reformed and relocated Ensor Research Foundation there was a resurgence of the ideals that Ensor started with and research took off once again. The foundation was under the leadership of Dr. Nandkumar S. Shah.[20] It held annual symposiums discussing its research being done.[21] Doctors from around the world attended these symposiums. They demonstrate Ensor’s success in research and development until at least 1976.[22] It is unclear what happened to the Ensor Research Foundation after this time. The Ensor Research Foundation building, on the other hand, was likely titled the Ensor building on its entablature in this period, and it continued to function as a morgue until 1995 or 1996.[23] Beginning in 2001, the building served as Volunteer Services for four years, when many of the still used buildings on the campus also closed.[24] From the time of its development and construction in 1938 to its final closure in 2005, the Ensor building had a history of serving multiple functions and producing hope and innovation.
In some ways, Ensor was unique to the Bull Street campus. Although there is evidence that similar research was happening at state institutions globally, many did not have buildings constructed for this specific purpose.[25] In the 1930s, various institutions were simply attempting to improve poor patient care, something J F Ensor began in 1870 on the Columbia campus.[26] However, state institutions during the 1930s were also newly concerned with standardizing education and creating innovative programs on their sites.[27] The Ensor building housed both new education and training and innovation on the South Carolina State Hospital campus. In the overall history of mental health, the Ensor building adds a distinctive and notable exception to the Bull Street campus.
The Ensor building still stands on the Bull Street site, awaiting the future development. As one of the still intact buildings on the site, its preservation is already more cost effective. The most recent plan for the construction on the site made public by The State Newspaper does not include the building.[28] However, this establishment that represented hope on the site since its construction still has the possibility to be repurposed. Its location, size, and multipurpose history, make it perfect for anything from offices, to a museum about the site, to a restaurant and brewery. Ensor began communicating new optimism and progress in a time of uncertainty on the State Hospital campus and hopefully will endure again in a new time of jeopardy on the Bull Street site.
The history and architecture of the Ensor building convey its significance and value to the Bull Street campus and to the history of science and medicine as a whole. The research laboratory began with many different functions and now stands waiting for a new purpose.
[1]List of buildings by Lafaye and Lafaye from 1918-1972, Buildings Information SC State Hospital Folder, Box 1A, Dept. of Mental Health Office of the State Commissioner Administrative, correspondence, and speech files of the superintendent/state commissioner S190018, SC Department of Archives and History, Columbia, SC.
[2]The Ensor Research Laboratory, Ensor Research Foundation Folder, Box 7A, Dept. of Mental Health Office of the State Commissioner Administrative, correspondence, and speech files of the superintendent/state commissioner S190018, SC Department of Archives and History, Columbia, SC.
[3]The Ensor Research Laboratory.
[4]The Ensor Research Laboratory.
[5]The Ensor Research Laboratory.
[6]The Ensor Research Laboratory.
[7] “Joshua Fulton Ensor, MD,” Box 5, State Dept. of Mental Health Division of Education and Research Services Historical Research Files ca. 1900-1999 S190093, SC Department of Archives and History, Columbia, SC.
[8]Joshua Fulton Ensor, MD.
[9]Joshua Fulton Ensor, MD.
[10]Joshua Fulton Ensor, MD.
[11]The Ensor Research Laboratory
[12]The Ensor Research Laboratory.
[13] “Bull Street Symposium: Kristin Steele.” YouTube, 13 March 2013 < http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Irg3YXl7Io > (accessed March 26, 2014).
[14] Research at State Hospital Results in Whipworm Cure, Box 5, State Dept. of Mental Health Division of Education and Research Services Historical Research Files ca. 1900-1999 S190093, SC Department of Archives and History, Columbia, SC.
[15]Carla Yanni, The Architecture of Madness: Insane Asylums in the United States, (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007).
[16]Architectural Drawings of Research Laboratory Building for the SC State Hospital, by Lafaye and Lafaye Architects dated August 1938, Docket SC 1238-F, Caroliniana Library, Columbia, SC.
[17]Architectural Drawings of Research Laboratory Building for the SC State Hospital, by Lafaye and Lafaye Architects dated August 1938
[18]Architectural Drawings of Research Laboratory Building for the SC State Hospital, by Lafaye and Lafaye Architects dated August 1938
[19] Newspaper Article titled “Ensor Reopens” dated 24 January 1971, Ensor Research Foundation, Folder Box 7A, Dept. of Mental Health Office of the State Commissioner Administrative, correspondence, and speech files of the superintendent/state commissioner S190018, SC Department of Archives and History, Columbia, SC.
[20] Newspaper Article titled “Ensor Reopens” dated 24 January 1971.
[21] Pamphlet for the Sixth Annual Research Symposium dated 22 November 1976, Ensor Research Foundation Folder, Box 7A, Dept. of Mental Health Office of the State Commissioner Administrative, correspondence, and speech files of the superintendent/state commissioner S190018, SC Department of Archives and History, Columbia, SC.
[22]Pamphlet for the Sixth Annual Research Symposium dated 22 November 1976
[23]Mike Mefford, personal interview with Kim Campbell, 25 March 2014.
[24]Mike Mefford, 25 March 2014.
[25] “The Board of Control: Research Work in Mental Hospitals.” British Medical Journal 2, no. 3274 (1923): 573.
[26]Joshua Fulton Ensor, MD and Mary de Young, “Asylums,” in Madness: An American History of Mental Illness and Its Treatment. (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2010), 110.
[27]de Young, Madness: An American History of Mental Illness and Its Treatment, 110.
[28] “Columbia Council Approves Stadium Contract on Initial Vote.” The State Newspaper, 4 March 2014 < http://www.thestate.com/2014/03/04/3305609/columbia-council-gives-initial.html > (accessed March 26, 2014).