Fairfield Hills Hospital - Opportunity Denied
by Ellen Aho and Sue Roman
Fairfield Hills Hospital was a major part of Newtown life for more than half a century, from 1931 when the cornerstone was laid to 1995 when it was shut down amid the national trend of deinstitutionalization. Owned and operated by the State of Connecticut Department of Mental Health, the facility was created to address overcrowding at the other two state psychiatric hospitals at the time. (Prior to 1963 it was known as Fairfield State Hospital).
Eventually, the hospital consisted of 16 buildings over 100 acres, plus another 670 acres of farm meadows and forest. At its peak in the 1960s, Fairfield Hills housed over 4000 patients and employed more than 40 doctors, 60 registered nurses, 500 psychiatric aides, and dozens of other employees representing the wide variety of skills needed to operate the facility, including secretarial, social work, occupational therapy, housekeeping, maintenance, food service and engineering.
Clearly, Fairfield Hills Hospital was one of Newtown’s largest employers, if not the largest, for a period that lasted decades. An employer of this scale should have had a profound effect on the racial makeup of Newtown, but our research revealed mostly the opposite.
Establishment of the hospital
When Fairfield Hills was built in the early 1930s Newtown was a small, rural community of less than 3,000 permanent residents. Local leaders actively resisted the location of the hospital in Newtown, feeling that the presence of an “insane asylum” would reduce their property values and hurt local business. Farmers and younger residents, however, did support the building of the hospital as they felt it would lead to money and jobs. As time went on, the people of Newtown began to have a more positive attitude about the hospital. Doctors and their families began to participate more in Newtown activities, and local organizations and individuals expressed their support of the hospital through volunteering and entertainment.
The hospital was built with housing for some of its staff. There were dormitories for single men and women and for married couples. The doctors and top administrators were provided with family housing on the campus. Additionally, people who lived in the area worked at the hospital as well as people who commuted from Bridgeport. During the 1950s, regulations requiring employees to live on hospital grounds were relaxed due to lack of space and more of them began to live elsewhere. Nevertheless, the availability of housing at the hospital was one of the things that made it appealing to its workers and many continued to live there.
The Fairfield Hills “bubble”
Fairfield Hills had a multi-racial workforce and reflected the diversity in the state. There were white workers whose families had been in Connecticut for generations as well as whites whose parents were recent European immigrants. There were Black workers from families many generations in Connecticut as well as Blacks who came north as part of the Great Migration. There were immigrants from Latin America, Asia, and Southeast Asia, and the Caribbean.
While specific racial and ethnic employment statistics for Fairfield Hills workers are not available, interviews with former employees revealed a few themes about life at Fairfield Hills during the latter part of the twentieth century.
First, the hierarchy among employees was based on their roles and tenure, not on their race or ethnicity. At the top were the doctors, who in the later years were immigrants and would now be considered people of color. There were some senior administrators who were Black. The nursing staff and aides were Black and white. Most of the staff managing the facilities were white. Other departments were mixed.
Second, not only did they work together, many of them also lived together, taking advantage of the housing and other resources available at the institution. The hospital had its own cafeteria, food market, sporting events, and other recreational activities, meaning that there was little need for employees to venture out of the vast hospital campus and little need for others to come in.
The doctors and some administrators lived in the duplexes on Washington Circle. They had barbeques and socialized. Their children played together and their families formed their own support network of babysitters, helpers and companions. Some sent their kids to Newtown public schools but the majority sent their kids to private schools while they lived on the Fairfield Hills campus. Transportation was provided to Fairfield Prep and Wooster School.
Workers tended to socialize based on their roles and which hall they worked or lived in. Doctors didn’t socialize with nurses and nurses didn’t socialize much with aides. There were distinctions based on class at play, but not so much based on race or ethnicity. The great leveler was Field Day when all rolled up their sleeves and joined in games with patients and their families.
After the passage of the Immigration and Nationalization Act in 1965, doctors and their families from India, Sri Lanka, Colombia, Phillipines, Turkey, and other countries came to work and live at Fairfield Hills. Hospital administrators actively recruited them and people such as Dr. Ramachandran helped them get settled. Dr. Anton Fry, who is from Sri Lanka and was a psychiatrist there for 5 years in the 1970s, called it a “mini United Nations.”
Harold Evans Jr, who is Black, said he had no idea of the race of his parents’ co-workers because they never mentioned it. Sally Lukeris, who is white and was a nurse there said they never gave race or ethnicity much thought. Dr. Fry said he never encountered any discrimination at Fairfield Hills and most people did not seem to think of him as being a “minority person”.
The diversity didn’t have long term effects on Newtown
Often people say that Newtown doesn’t have many Black residents because there are no places for Blacks to work in town. First this implies that where Black people work is different from where white people work. Second, it ignores that for decades a good number of employees at Fairfield Hills Hospital were Black.
What appears to be the case is that Black employees for the most part were not able to settle in Newtown. A number of white employees did live in town and the towns population doubled from 1930 to 1950, and then doubled again by 1970. At the same time the Black population in Connecticut expanded 10 fold from 1930 to 1970. Yet the hundreds of Black employees at Fairfield Hills over the decades with secure state jobs did not affect the town's demographics.
Harold Evans Jr. said his parents met at Fairfield Hills and lived in the married-couples dorm for a while. The hospital did not offer them family housing so when Georgia Evans was expecting they looked to buy a house in Newtown. Instead they bought a house in Bethel in 1958. Harold later asked his mother why they didn’t live in Newtown and she said they wouldn’t sell them a house because they were Black.
Indeed, by 1958, there was only one Black family who had had children graduate from Newtown High School since it was formed 30 years earlier, the family of John Ray who worked for the Scudder Smith family. There wouldn’t be a Black graduate who wasn’t a Ray until William Mack in 1971. William lived on the Fairfield Hills campus where his father was the head of the social work department.
Carrie Coleman, who is Black, was able to settle in Newtown in the early 1980s. She had been working as a social worker at Fairfield Hills for several years when she and her husband George decided to move to Newtown. They had lived in Candlewood Shores in Brookfield in a house that had at one point had a racial covenant preventing Black people from living there. The sellers of the Newtown house happened to work at Fairfield Hills Hospital and personally introduced the Colemans to contractors so that they would have people they knew would take their calls to work on the house. George noted that for most of his tenure in Newtown he was never invited to be part of any civic organization. Recently he has become a corporator at Newtown Savings Bank and is in the Lions Club.
We do not know of other Black families who settled in Newtown after working at Fairfield Hills Hospital. If you have information please contact us.
The doctors who were from Latin America, Southeast Asia, Asia, and other non-European countries were able to settle in town with their families. Some set up private practices in the area. Many are retired in the Newtown area and still keep in touch with each other. Some of the second and third generations of their families have stayed in the area.
Although Fairfield Hills Hospital offered housing for people at all job levels, it never had enough housing to meet demand. Employees sought apartments to rent, and finding very few in Newtown went further to Danbury and Bridgeport for their housing needs. It is an open question why in the decades that there was demand for housing, this need was not filled in Newtown.
Fairfield Hills Closes
When the hospital closed in 1995, there were about 485 workers who received layoff notices. A majority of those were able to find new positions with the state and about 17 remained temporarily to run the physical campus.
Now nearly three decades later, the town of Newtown owns the property and Fairfield Hills is a mix of open space, town and commercial properties, and numerous vacant and deteriorating buildings.
Little evidence remains of the vibrant community that once lived inside the Fairfield Hills Bubble, which today exists mainly in the memories of those who worked there.
No housing has of yet been built on the campus.
Eventually, the hospital consisted of 16 buildings over 100 acres, plus another 670 acres of farm meadows and forest. At its peak in the 1960s, Fairfield Hills housed over 4000 patients and employed more than 40 doctors, 60 registered nurses, 500 psychiatric aides, and dozens of other employees representing the wide variety of skills needed to operate the facility, including secretarial, social work, occupational therapy, housekeeping, maintenance, food service and engineering.
Clearly, Fairfield Hills Hospital was one of Newtown’s largest employers, if not the largest, for a period that lasted decades. An employer of this scale should have had a profound effect on the racial makeup of Newtown, but our research revealed mostly the opposite.
Establishment of the hospital
When Fairfield Hills was built in the early 1930s Newtown was a small, rural community of less than 3,000 permanent residents. Local leaders actively resisted the location of the hospital in Newtown, feeling that the presence of an “insane asylum” would reduce their property values and hurt local business. Farmers and younger residents, however, did support the building of the hospital as they felt it would lead to money and jobs. As time went on, the people of Newtown began to have a more positive attitude about the hospital. Doctors and their families began to participate more in Newtown activities, and local organizations and individuals expressed their support of the hospital through volunteering and entertainment.
The hospital was built with housing for some of its staff. There were dormitories for single men and women and for married couples. The doctors and top administrators were provided with family housing on the campus. Additionally, people who lived in the area worked at the hospital as well as people who commuted from Bridgeport. During the 1950s, regulations requiring employees to live on hospital grounds were relaxed due to lack of space and more of them began to live elsewhere. Nevertheless, the availability of housing at the hospital was one of the things that made it appealing to its workers and many continued to live there.
The Fairfield Hills “bubble”
Fairfield Hills had a multi-racial workforce and reflected the diversity in the state. There were white workers whose families had been in Connecticut for generations as well as whites whose parents were recent European immigrants. There were Black workers from families many generations in Connecticut as well as Blacks who came north as part of the Great Migration. There were immigrants from Latin America, Asia, and Southeast Asia, and the Caribbean.
While specific racial and ethnic employment statistics for Fairfield Hills workers are not available, interviews with former employees revealed a few themes about life at Fairfield Hills during the latter part of the twentieth century.
First, the hierarchy among employees was based on their roles and tenure, not on their race or ethnicity. At the top were the doctors, who in the later years were immigrants and would now be considered people of color. There were some senior administrators who were Black. The nursing staff and aides were Black and white. Most of the staff managing the facilities were white. Other departments were mixed.
Second, not only did they work together, many of them also lived together, taking advantage of the housing and other resources available at the institution. The hospital had its own cafeteria, food market, sporting events, and other recreational activities, meaning that there was little need for employees to venture out of the vast hospital campus and little need for others to come in.
The doctors and some administrators lived in the duplexes on Washington Circle. They had barbeques and socialized. Their children played together and their families formed their own support network of babysitters, helpers and companions. Some sent their kids to Newtown public schools but the majority sent their kids to private schools while they lived on the Fairfield Hills campus. Transportation was provided to Fairfield Prep and Wooster School.
Workers tended to socialize based on their roles and which hall they worked or lived in. Doctors didn’t socialize with nurses and nurses didn’t socialize much with aides. There were distinctions based on class at play, but not so much based on race or ethnicity. The great leveler was Field Day when all rolled up their sleeves and joined in games with patients and their families.
After the passage of the Immigration and Nationalization Act in 1965, doctors and their families from India, Sri Lanka, Colombia, Phillipines, Turkey, and other countries came to work and live at Fairfield Hills. Hospital administrators actively recruited them and people such as Dr. Ramachandran helped them get settled. Dr. Anton Fry, who is from Sri Lanka and was a psychiatrist there for 5 years in the 1970s, called it a “mini United Nations.”
Harold Evans Jr, who is Black, said he had no idea of the race of his parents’ co-workers because they never mentioned it. Sally Lukeris, who is white and was a nurse there said they never gave race or ethnicity much thought. Dr. Fry said he never encountered any discrimination at Fairfield Hills and most people did not seem to think of him as being a “minority person”.
The diversity didn’t have long term effects on Newtown
Often people say that Newtown doesn’t have many Black residents because there are no places for Blacks to work in town. First this implies that where Black people work is different from where white people work. Second, it ignores that for decades a good number of employees at Fairfield Hills Hospital were Black.
What appears to be the case is that Black employees for the most part were not able to settle in Newtown. A number of white employees did live in town and the towns population doubled from 1930 to 1950, and then doubled again by 1970. At the same time the Black population in Connecticut expanded 10 fold from 1930 to 1970. Yet the hundreds of Black employees at Fairfield Hills over the decades with secure state jobs did not affect the town's demographics.
Harold Evans Jr. said his parents met at Fairfield Hills and lived in the married-couples dorm for a while. The hospital did not offer them family housing so when Georgia Evans was expecting they looked to buy a house in Newtown. Instead they bought a house in Bethel in 1958. Harold later asked his mother why they didn’t live in Newtown and she said they wouldn’t sell them a house because they were Black.
Indeed, by 1958, there was only one Black family who had had children graduate from Newtown High School since it was formed 30 years earlier, the family of John Ray who worked for the Scudder Smith family. There wouldn’t be a Black graduate who wasn’t a Ray until William Mack in 1971. William lived on the Fairfield Hills campus where his father was the head of the social work department.
Carrie Coleman, who is Black, was able to settle in Newtown in the early 1980s. She had been working as a social worker at Fairfield Hills for several years when she and her husband George decided to move to Newtown. They had lived in Candlewood Shores in Brookfield in a house that had at one point had a racial covenant preventing Black people from living there. The sellers of the Newtown house happened to work at Fairfield Hills Hospital and personally introduced the Colemans to contractors so that they would have people they knew would take their calls to work on the house. George noted that for most of his tenure in Newtown he was never invited to be part of any civic organization. Recently he has become a corporator at Newtown Savings Bank and is in the Lions Club.
We do not know of other Black families who settled in Newtown after working at Fairfield Hills Hospital. If you have information please contact us.
The doctors who were from Latin America, Southeast Asia, Asia, and other non-European countries were able to settle in town with their families. Some set up private practices in the area. Many are retired in the Newtown area and still keep in touch with each other. Some of the second and third generations of their families have stayed in the area.
Although Fairfield Hills Hospital offered housing for people at all job levels, it never had enough housing to meet demand. Employees sought apartments to rent, and finding very few in Newtown went further to Danbury and Bridgeport for their housing needs. It is an open question why in the decades that there was demand for housing, this need was not filled in Newtown.
Fairfield Hills Closes
When the hospital closed in 1995, there were about 485 workers who received layoff notices. A majority of those were able to find new positions with the state and about 17 remained temporarily to run the physical campus.
Now nearly three decades later, the town of Newtown owns the property and Fairfield Hills is a mix of open space, town and commercial properties, and numerous vacant and deteriorating buildings.
Little evidence remains of the vibrant community that once lived inside the Fairfield Hills Bubble, which today exists mainly in the memories of those who worked there.
No housing has of yet been built on the campus.
Sources Used:
Interviews with Harold Evans Jr., Sally Lukeris, Carrie Coleman, George Coleman, Terry Tortora, Dr. Anton Fry
Carini, Esta, The Mentally Ill in Connecticut: Changing patterns of care and the evolution of psychiatric nursing, 1636-1972, State of Connecticut Dept. of Health, 1974
Interviews with Harold Evans Jr., Sally Lukeris, Carrie Coleman, George Coleman, Terry Tortora, Dr. Anton Fry
Carini, Esta, The Mentally Ill in Connecticut: Changing patterns of care and the evolution of psychiatric nursing, 1636-1972, State of Connecticut Dept. of Health, 1974