Willard Tour: Grandview building

This post is part of a series. To see all the buildings I visited on the Willard Tour click the links below.

The first stop on the tour was the Grandview building, in fact we registered for the tour in Grandview. I have to admit, I was kind of distracted during the tour of this building. My kids had called twice and I was focused on finding a restroom after our long car ride to Willard.

Grandview was built in 1860 and was the first Agricultural College in New York. Renovated in 1870, it became housing for women patients of Willard “with a calmer nature”. Part of the renovations included scaling the 4 story building down to 3 floors, it was thought that in the event of a fire it would of been very difficult to remove patients from the 4th floor. Even in it’s downsized state Grandview is a massive building.

We started our tour in the basement, it was a dark and dank area. It was actually very close to what I pictured while reading What She left behind when the basements were mentioned or visited in the book.