Richardson Olmsted Campus

H.H. Richardson's Romanesque asylum, set in Frederick Law Olmsted grounds

Address 400 Forest Avenue

The Richardson Olmsted Campus is one of the most extraordinary buildings in the United States: a massive Romanesque Revival complex in warm buff sandstone, designed in 1869 by Henry Hobson Richardson and set in grounds by Frederick Law Olmsted. Richardson considered it his finest work. The two Romanesque towers and the connecting wings of arcaded stone stretch nearly a kilometre across a gently sloping hill on the city's west side.

Richardson and Olmsted conceived the campus as a therapeutic environment — the idea that patients with mental illness might recover better in a beautiful, humane setting. The building served as a psychiatric facility for over a century. A major restoration opened the Hotel Henry within the complex, and tours run regularly from the Richardson Center at the base of the towers. The small museum covers Richardson's work and the building's long, complicated history.

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A story
The Buffalo State Asylum was Richardson's radical experiment: the belief that beautiful architecture and open grounds could help treat mental illness, rather than confinement. Olmsted, fresh from designing Central Park, laid out the campus grounds. The state used the building as a psychiatric facility until 1974, by which point it had badly deteriorated. A decades-long restoration has turned it into a boutique hotel and museum campus — finally open to the public in a way its architects always intended.

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