In a green and elegant part of Buffalo, New York, not far from the Albright-Knox Art Gallery and set in an Olmsted-designed park, is a singularly dramatic Victorian ruin. H.H. Richardson's Buffalo State Hospital for the Insane (begun 1871) features the architect's signature combination of power, colour and rhythmic massing. Despite having been partially demolished, it is still an extraordinarily long building (2200 feet long originally) and, in plan, a very weird one. Flanking a central turreted block are two wings. Flanking these are two further wings, and so on, so that before the demolitions there were five wings on each side. But 'wing' is hardly the word, since each of these ten elements is in effect its own building, set entirely back from or in front of the one next to it, and connected only by a short curved connecting structure. The entire composition resembles a shallow V, or a flock of birds 'en echelon' (see illustration).
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