City Document. — JVo. 113. 
CITY OF BOSTON. 
LETTER 
FROM 
GEORGE B. EMERSON TO SAMUEL C. COBB, 
RELATIVE TO A SITE FOR A NEW 
LUNATIC HOSPITAL. 
Laid on the table, and ordered to be printed. 
In Common Council, December 9, 1869. 
Attest: 
W. P. GREGG, 
Cleric of the Common Council. CITY OF BOSTON. 
3 Pemberton Square, Dec. 7, 1869. 
Samuel C. Cobb, Esq. 
Dear Sir, — I see, from your Minority Report, and from 
what you have been doing in the City Council, that you are 
opposed to building a new hospital for the insane at Winthrop. 
I agree with you; and as I have a very deep interest in the 
management of the insane, and a citizen’3 interest in the ex- 
penditures of the City Government, I take the liberty of 
addressing you upon the subject. 
I have lived a part of nearly every year for twenty years 
in Winthrop, not far from the Winthrop Farm, on which it is pro- 
posed to build the asylum. I have walked, ridden or driven 
many times, in almost every month of the year, along the side 
of the hill, and have walked over it, and am perfectly familiar 
with everything about it. 
The climate of Winthrop during the summer months is very 
healthy and delightful; but every part of Winthrop is neces- 
sarily, from its exposure, very windy. At my house, on ground 
only thirty feet above the sea level, the winds are always fresh, 
and in the winter excessively violent. We tried one winter’s 
residence there, and found it almost constantly so boisterous 
that it was seldom agreeable to take a walk, and the wind often 
so strong as to make it nearly impossible for a woman to walk 
at all. On the top of the hill, on the Winthrop Farm, the air 
is delicious in the hottest days of July and August, and in the 4 
City Document. — No. 113. 
soft weather of early autumn, and the prospects are very beauti- 
ful. A person visiting it on such a day might think it a charm- 
ing situation; but on almost every day in the winter-half of the 
year, the winds, from whatever quarter, are so furious, that a 
person who has been once there at that season would not will- 
ingly consent to go again till next summer, even for a climb or 
a look. The top is absolutely unprotected. The northwest 
wind dashes upon it, coming over several miles of unbroken 
water and marsh. The north and the northeast winds come 
upon it over nearly the whole length of Lynn Bay, and the 
east winds reach it after sweeping over the whole extent of 
Massachusetts Bay. I never saw a place more unfit to build 
upon, anything but a lighthouse or a beacon; and if it were 
built upon, for human habitation, there are few days in the 
winter when it would be safe for any but a strong man to walk 
out. 
There is scarcely a vestige of a tree there, and it would cost 
tall fences and high walls and vast trouble and expense to 
plant trees there. 
The site selected for the asylum could be reached only by 
a long, winding road, which would have to be protected from 
the winds by lofty walls on each side. Building on that elevated 
spot would be greatly more expensive than on the plain, as 
every block of stone, every piece of timber, and the daily sup- 
plies for the builders and for the inhabitants of the house when 
built, would have to be really lifted upwards to a perpendicular 
height, which would require the expenditure of more force, pro- 
bably, than would be required to convey these materials from 
Boston to the foot of the hill. 
At the foot and on the lower slopes of the hill, it would 
doubtless be easy to find water. But it is so excessively steep, 
on two sides, that it looks a3 if it would be impossible to get 
any in any part of the top, and water would have to be 
pumped up from a distance, at great and perpetual expense. Lunatic Hospital. 
5 
Fountains, gardens, shrubbery, are all wholly out of the ques- 
tion forever. 
No person who had been on the top of that hill in a storm in 
winter would ever think of building a residence there, and I can- 
not conceive of a sane person’s thinking of it as a suitable site for 
any building for human habitation, unless he had visited it only 
in the pleasantest season of the year, and had utterly forgotten 
the six or seven months during which it must be as bleak, 
boisterous and inhospitable as Greenland. 
I once took Miss Dix, who is as much interested in, and as 
well acquainted with everything which relates to hospitals and 
asylums for the insane as any person living, to the top of this 
hill. We talked the whole matter over then and there, and I 
know that she entirely agrees with me in everything I have 
here said. 
Earnestly hoping that a more suitable site may be -chosen for 
the contemplated asylum, I am, 
Yours respectfully, 
GEORGE B. EMERSON.