Powell Building at Laconia State School housed several wards full of naked men in the early 1970s. Some of its residents wore straight jackets all day and slept in them.
In 1991 New Hampshire became the first state to close all these open wards named for governors whose portraits hang in the marble halls of the Statehouse. Dwinell Building, King, Keyes, Blood, Baker, Murphy, Peterson and the other human holding areas became office buildings or prison dorms or empty symbols of an early ...
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