Fairfield Hills Hospital: A Place for the Forgotten
The last winter at Fairfield Hills settled in silence. December 8, 1995—the end. Orderlies moved patients toward waiting vans, their breath rising in the cold. The doors would lock behind them.
The hospital was closed for good, and soon, the only footsteps in its hallways would belong to the occasional security guard or a trespassing thrill-seeker.
Fairfield Hills started differently. In the late 1920s, Connecticut’s two state-run psychiatric hospitals—Norwich State Hospital and Connecticut Valley Hospital—were overcrowded.
The solution was a third facility, one designed to ease the strain. Fairfield State Hospital, as it was originally called, broke ground in 1930.
Architect Walter P. Crabtree Sr. sketched out a vision: red brick buildings with white-trimmed windows connected by underground tunnels, all spread across 770 acres in Newtown.
It looked more like a small town than a hospital, with a power plant, a chapel, and even a bowling alley.
The hospital officially opened on June 1, 1933. The first patients arrived in groups and were transferred from Connecticut Valley Hospital.
At first, there were only 500 of them—most diagnosed with schizophrenia, depression, or various forms of psychosis.
Three doctors handled the admissions, making notes in thick, leather-bound files. The buildings were new, the staff hopeful.
By the 1940s, Fairfield Hills was growing fast. More buildings went up—Kent House, Canaan House, and Litchfield House.
The hospital was self-sustaining, with its own dairy farm and bakery. At its peak, it housed over 4,000 patients, many of whom never left.
Doctors experimented with the latest psychiatric treatments, convinced they were helping.
Newtown changed around it, but the hospital remained its own world, separate from the town just beyond its tree line.
For those inside, it was home. For those outside, it was a mystery.
The Treatments That Shaped a Generation
A name on a patient file. A handwritten note: Melancholia. Electroconvulsive therapy recommended. The treatments at Fairfield Hills weren’t unusual for their time, but they were harsh.
By the 1940s, doctors believed they were advancing psychiatric care, replacing confinement with procedures meant to “reset” the mind.
Hydrotherapy came first. Patients were submerged in ice-cold water, sometimes for hours, their bodies wrapped tightly in wet sheets.
The sudden chill was supposed to calm agitation. If that failed, insulin shock therapy was an option—injecting high doses of insulin to trigger seizures, forcing the brain to restart.
Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) followed. Thick leather straps held patients down while volts surged through their skulls.
They convulsed, their bodies stiff as boards, and when it was over, many had no memory of what had happened.
Lobotomies were the last resort. The hospital performed its first in the 1940s. A patient lay still as a metal instrument, thin as an ice pick, slid through the eye socket and into the brain.
The idea was simple: sever connections and remove distress. For many, it erased more than that—memories, emotions, even personality itself.
Treatment took place inside the patient wards, but the underground tunnels also played a role.
Orderlies moved patients between buildings, avoiding the bitter New England winters.
Sometimes, stretchers carried more than the living. The morgue sat at the end of a long corridor, where doctors performed autopsies under flickering lights.
Outside, the town of Newtown grew. A new grocery store opened on Main Street, and businesses changed hands.
People went on with their lives, unaware of the quiet suffering behind the hospital’s red brick walls.
The Turning Point—When It All Began to Crumble
By the 1960s, everything was changing. New psychiatric drugs hit the market, offering an alternative to long-term hospitalization.
Thorazine, the so-called “chemical lobotomy,” lets doctors control symptoms with a pill instead of a scalpel.
The government pushed for deinstitutionalization, moving patients into smaller community clinics instead of massive state-run asylums.
Fairfield Hills felt the shift almost immediately. New admissions slowed. The wards emptied. Some buildings sat half-full, their echoing hallways reminders of a system no longer in favor.
By the 1970s, budget cuts made things worse. Maintenance slipped. Understaffing became routine.
Reports of patient neglect surfaced and whispered through the halls. Some escaped—slipping into the nearby woods, disappearing into the streets of Newtown.
The hospital tried to adapt. Administrators brought in new programs and experimented with outpatient care.
But the money was drying up, and the state had little interest in keeping an outdated facility afloat.
In the early 1990s, the decision came down: Fairfield Hills would close.
On December 8, 1995, the last patients were loaded into state vans and headed to Connecticut Valley Hospital in Middletown.
Doctors turned in their badges. The doors locked behind them. What had once been a city within a city—4,000 patients, dozens of buildings, a network of tunnels—was abandoned.
The power plant went cold, and the underground corridors, once filled with movement, sat in darkness.
In Newtown, some people were relieved. Others weren’t so sure. The hospital was gone, but what had happened there—what had been built and buried—wasn’t so easy to erase.
A Ghost Town Left to Rot
Fairfield Hills didn’t disappear overnight. The buildings stood where they always had, brick facades weathering under the seasons.
Windows shattered, ivy crawled up the sides, and the once-busy tunnels became an underground maze of silence.
Newtown took control of the land in 2004, buying 185 acres from the state. There were ideas—business parks, housing, even a golf course—but nothing moved fast.
The first tenants arrived in the mid-2000s. The town’s Board of Education and Planning & Zoning Department moved into Canaan House, one of the few buildings still usable.
The fire marshal’s office followed.
But for every step forward, Fairfield Hills resisted change. The tunnels, once a shortcut for moving patients and supplies, became a magnet for trespassers.
Urban explorers slipped through broken doors, chasing ghost stories. Filmmakers saw potential in the decaying halls—MTV’s Fear used the hospital for a 2000 episode, disguising it as “St.
Agnes Hospital.” Sleepers was filmed here in 1996. Rumors swirled, and Fairfield Hills became a destination for thrill-seekers.
By 2009, Newtown was done waiting. Welders sealed the tunnels, and steel plates locked off the underground. Concrete filled the gaps.
A few buildings fell and were cleared for new projects, but most remained boarded up, hollow, and untouched.
The town pushed forward, but Fairfield Hills didn’t move.
One of the first private businesses to break through the stalemate was NewSylum Brewing Company.
It opened inside the old Stratford Hall building in June 2020. Customers sipped craft beer where psychiatric patients once ate their meals.
It was the first commercial lease on the property—a test of whether Fairfield Hills could be more than a forgotten institution.
Fairfield Hills Hospital—A Landmark in Limbo
Fairfield Hills Hospital has always been in transition—once a psychiatric hospital, then an abandoned relic, and now something in between.
Time has moved forward, but Fairfield Hills remains in limbo. Some buildings have new purposes.
Bridgeport Hall became the Newtown Municipal Center in 2009. The Newtown Youth Academy opened a recreation center.
In 2014, the Newtown Volunteer Ambulance Corps built a $4.5 million facility on the grounds.
In September 2024, Fairfield Hills was listed on the National Register of Historic Places—a nod to its past and a hurdle for its future.
Newtown officials saw tax credits, funding, and a path to revival. But the question lingers: Should the institution preserve its bones or carve out something new?
Developers have their answer. WinnDevelopment, a Boston-based firm, has a plan for 169 apartments, retail spaces, and a chance to reshape two of Fairfield Hills’ largest buildings.
Kent House and Shelton House, once patient housing, could soon be home to a different kind of resident.
Some locals welcome the change, hoping for economic revival. Others argue that turning part of the old hospital into high-end apartments ignores the weight of its history.
Money is already moving. In December 2024, the town secured a $610,000 state grant to restore four historic duplexes on the property—structures once home to hospital physicians.
The roofs need repairs, and the walls need lead abatement, but the goal is clear: commercial tenants—offices, retail, and maybe even restaurants.
The town wants Fairfield Hills to pay for itself.
But the past still grips the place. In January 2025, vandals broke into Cochran House, leaving graffiti scrawled across its walls.
The building has been abandoned for years, but the act was a reminder that Fairfield Hills may be on the verge of reinvention, but it isn’t there yet.
Security patrols have increased, but so have the voices questioning whether the property will ever be fully repurposed.
For now, Fairfield Hills stands at a crossroads. It is historic but unfinished, full of potential but still marked by the past. The doors to its old wards may be locked, but nothing here is truly closed.
