St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in Washington D.C., once called the Government Hospital for the insane, is representative of more than seventy such campuses made up of massive, ornate Victorian buildings designed by some of the most notable architects in the nation, and built across America over a sixty-five year period. Their now largely decaying forms represent ghosts of an era, built on a vision that became for some, a nightmare. The buildings of the Kirkbride Plan deserve to be remembered.
The Reconquista, or Christian reconquest of Iberia, took nearly 800 years. The fighting did not come without great attempts by Muslim powers across the strait trying to reestablish their presence in mainland Europe. The last gasp of that effort came in the 1330s, when the powerful Marinid sultanate of what is modern Morocco invaded in an attempt to reverse Christian gains and secure the perilous position of the Sultanate of Granada.