The Tioranda Craig House, The Abandoned Hospital That Lobotomized A Kennedy
Joel M. NadlerTioranda, or the Craig House, largely tended to wealthy or famous clientele like Rosemary Kennedy and Zelda Fitzgerald.
A few miles south of Beacon, New York lies an abandoned Victorian mansion that once housed both Rosemary Kennedy and Zelda Fitzgerald. Unfortunately for both patients of America’s first privately licensed psychiatric hospital, their stay was short-lived and ended in tragedy.
Originally named Tioranda, it was built for Civil War officer General Joseph Howland in 1859. It became a psychiatric institution in 1915, and largely tended to patients wealthy enough to afford it. With 60 acres of land including a pool, gym, and golf course, it certainly wasn’t cheap.
Clarence Slocum, a Scottish doctor who specialized in the ever-changing nature of mental health treatments of the time, renamed the main building Craig House. He and his son Jonathan were firm believers in intensive talk therapy, fine dining, and both indoor and outdoor recreational activities.
While the Craig House was viewed as America’s most prestigious hub of mental rehabilitation, the reality behind its walls was anything but rosy. Henry Fonda’s wife — and Jane Fonda’s mother — Frances Ford Seymour died by suicide here in 1942, after she took a razor to her throat.
John F. Kennedy’s sister, Rosemary Kennedy, was famously lobotomized at Tioranda. She was just 23 years old when the primitive insanity treatment left her with the mental acuity of a two-year-old.
Zelda Fitzgerald, meanwhile, had been convalescing at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore while her infamous husband was using his wife's letters to form the Nicole Driver character in Tender is the Night. When Zelda read the early manuscript, she was so distraught that her husband placed her under constant supervision.
"I left my capacity for hoping on the little roads that led to Zelda's sanitarium," he later wrote.
Unfortunately, their relationship began crumbling as he moved to Hollywood to work as a writer and his wife's Craig House stay became increasingly expensive. With monthly fees reaching $750, the author had her transferred to the cheaper Highland Hospital in Asheville, North Carolina.
The last letter she ever wrote him, however, was penned at the Craig House.
"Whenever you are ready to make the change, I will be ready to go. I am awfully home-sick in spite of the beauties of this place," she wrote.
Tragically, F. Scott Fitzgerald died of alcoholism. His widowed and afflicted wife followed in 1948 when the Asheville hospital caught fire, and she burned to death. To make matters worse, she was awaiting electroshock therapy.
The Craig House closed in 1999, and it remains abandoned and forgotten.
