In the late 1700s, every city had an almshouse. It was a place to house the mentally ill and the poor. In the 1800s, the Norwich city fathers decided to move the almshouse from the downtown area to a remote location. They built a new road for the new almshouse. They called the road Asylum Street. In 1876, the structure burned to the ground with 16 inmates trapped in locked rooms. They were buried on the grounds in unmarked graves. A few years later a new almshouse was built, the one pictured here. In 1927 it was closed and the inmates were transferred to the new Norwich State Hospital. Over the years it deteriorated until it burned again in the 1950s. From 1888 to 1927 more than 200 unclaimed bodies were buried in the field, next to the almshouse, in unmarked graves. They remain today. Today, the dog park occupies the land where the structure once stood.

Ken Keeley is the author of 12 Norwich pictorial books. He can be reached by e-mail at kenekjr000@comcast.net