October 2024
It’s a striking Victorian Gothic manor, the only remnant of the long-closed Hamilton Psychiatric Hospital on Hamilton Mountain. Century Manor was built in 1884, originally as the East House for what was then called the Hamilton Asylum for the Insane, a provincial facility tasked with housing the criminally insane, like murderers, serial killers and rapists.
Century Manor, as the East House was called after 1972, had several functions over the years, including as a reception hospital, addictions and forensic psychiatry wings, a school for adolescents and finally a museum from the 1980s until it closed in 1995. All the other buildings relating to the asylum have been demolished, starting with the grand Barton Building in 1976, but the 500-acre property remains owned by the Ontario government.
Until well into the 20th century, the Hamilton Asylum was in an isolated, rural area, accessible only by a dirt road. As such, it maintained the original farm that originally occupied the hospital property, providing all the necessary food. Cattle, chickens and pigs as well as fruits and vegetables. The asylum even had its own bakery, butcher’s shop, greenhouse, root cellar, milk-processing house, tailor’s shop, sewing room, upholstery shop, fire hall, power house, a fleet of vehicles, skating and curling rinks, a bowling green, tennis courts and chapel.
The farming operation ended in 1956, when all but 86-acres of the hospital property was sold off for residential and Community College development.
Century Manor is the last of the original Hamilton Asylum Victorian facilities and one of the few remaining in the province, after the era of provincial hospitals ended in 2000. The administration transferred to community hospitals, with the Hamilton Psychiatric Hospital being re-named St. Joseph’s Centre for Mountain Health Care Services.
Re-named again in 2014 the Margaret and Charles Juravinski Centre for Integrated Healthcare, the Juravinski Centre is an innovative facility designed for mental health and addiction treatment, research and education, along with medical services.
Over the years, there have been plans to restore Century Manor. In 2018, Mohawk College proposed purchasing Century Manor for use as a student residence or administrative building, but this never came to fruition. In August 2020, Infrastructure Ontario, the real estate arm of the Ontario government, announced its intent to rezone the former HPH lands to allow for residential development.
It is a rare surviving example in Ontario of a special-purpose building designed to house mentally ill patients and the only of its kind in Hamilton.
Now after sitting abandoned and deteriorating for almost three decades, non-profit company Indwell is proposing to restore the crumbling Century Manor into affordable housing, partnering with long-term care home developer Schlegel Villages to transform it into roughly 40 supportive housing apartments.
For now, Century Manor remains abandoned and boarded up, with only the spirits from the past roaming its halls.
Some scenes for the 2006 film Skinwalkers were filmed in Century Manor.
Sources: https://www.thespec.com/news/hamilton-region/indwell-vows-to-bring-creepy-crumbling-century-manor-back-to-life/article_bfe8cb60-7eeb-57f2-aa76-6ef7fd649dca.html?source=newsletter&utm_content=a05&utm_source=ml_nl&utm_medium=email&utm_email=6641A943D7AF4DBF58F985736331C513&utm_campaign=hshp_2839, Century Manor, Ontario – Abandoned Mansion – Hauntings and Torchure (pinintheatlas.com), Hamilton Insane Asylum – Wikipedia, ARCHITECTURAL CONSERVANCY ONTARIO – Risk – Century Manor (acontario.ca), Abandoned Century Manor Insane Asylum Hamilton Ontario (freaktography.com).