Institutions were formed for different kinds of disabilities and for different purposes.
Once arrived, a person might find himself or herself to be a student, worker, inmate, patient, or “consumer.” No matter where people ended up, they grappled with issues of identity, community, and autonomy.
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In a ward at the Convalescent Home for Hebrew Children, girls hold dolls and crutches and sit or lie on hospital beds.
This frail woman wrapped in coat and blankets has been wheeled outside by a nurse.
Experience varied depending upon many factors, including how a disability came about. This young soldier convalesces in a military hospital after surgeons amputated his left leg below the knee. He wears pajamas and has a cigar while standing with crutches.
Diagnosis with tuberculosis or “consumption” often entailed extended periods in a sanitarium. This group of women patients gathered for a portrait during the “rest cure.”
In this publicity montage, children work with devices, bathe, and learn to use crutches and braces.
During “the doctor’s morning round” at Blackwell’s Island Lunatic Asylum, the doctor in a suit and bowler hat walks among women patients drawn in various postures that indicate madness.
Four young girls in sack dresses and short, chopped hair stand outside a building with barred windows, accompanied by their teacher who smiles at the camera.
Thirteen adolescents in caps and gowns and wheelchairs or crutches pose on an urban roof top.
In the dining room of the Red Cross Institute for the Blind, white men and women sit in a large airy room with a dozen tables and pressed tablecloths, waited on by African American servants.