Future Performing Arts Center

The Medford State Hospital campus was the first such facility designed in the cottage style to provide fresh air, light, social interaction, and meaningful daily activities to people on the outskirts of society, an innovative idea in 1896. It was fully self-sufficient, with hundreds of acres of farmland, root cellars, corn silos, and more than 1,000 cattle and 3,000 chickens. Patients worked on the farm, supplying food for all of the state hospitals in eastern Massachusetts. During World War Two, the campus housed nearly 2,3000 people, more than the population of Medfield at the time. In the 1960s, under the leadership of Dr. Harold Lee, MSH gained a national reputation for its innovative rehabilitation program for patients. Increasingly independent living situations on campus were combined with intensive vocational work training to increase patients' skills and potentially return them to society. The chapel served the entire community for religious services, dances, movies, and as a gymnnasium.

Medfield, Massachusetts · United States