Tewksbury State Hospital

Tewksbury State Hospital occupies a campus on East Street in Tewksbury, Massachusetts, that began as one of three state almshouses opened in 1854. The almshouse was created after a wave of Irish immigration overwhelmed town poorhouses, and it admitted more than 2,000 paupers in its first year. Its original wooden buildings were later replaced. Around 1900 the site was enlarged and converted into a hospital and infirmary. Most surviving buildings date from the early twentieth century, including the 1894 Queen Anne Administration Building and the 1901 Male Asylum, both designed by Boston architect John A. Fox. Red brick walls, fieldstone foundations and slate roofs unify the varied styles. The grounds keep the nineteenth-century almshouse quadrangle, fieldstone pools, mature trees, farm fields and woodland. The district was listed for its architecture, landscape and role in the state's care of the poor and mentally ill. Later parking lots and the 1962 Saunders Building detract in places.