AUGUSTA, Maine – Bright reds and oranges explode on a dark underground mural, while a quiet evergreen forest screens a blue lake and mountain on another.
Artwork and poetry bring life to the dreary walls of a little-known network of tunnels connecting the complex of buildings that long housed Maine’s mental patients. Some of the murals and verses, which have been posted on the Internet, tell stories of pain and loneliness that shadowed the lives of those who were confined to the Augusta Mental Health Institute.
A poem titled “Rain on My Soul” begins with the line, “Walked too far to ever get back to my sweet home again,” and ends with a prayer to “make our hearts to shine.”
An unidentified poet wrote, “If my heart could speak, I’m sure it would say,/ ‘I wish I were someplace else Today.’ Among These books, a great amount of Knowledge There must be,/ But what good is Knowledge where others carry the keys.”
But there’s also a brighter side.
“It’s real work created by real people,” said Gary Sawyer, who photographed many of the works that are posted on the Internet. “You can see the joy of people in treatment.”
Patients gained an emotional outlet when they were encouraged to express themselves in the tunnels by Natasha Mayers, a prominent Maine artist who taught art at the institute a generation ago. Mayers also brought in professional artists from all over Maine to brighten up one of the tunnels while they were still used by patients and support staff as underground sidewalks between buildings.
The art served two purposes, Mayers said: It helped patients “to communicate with each other and have fun, and to make the tunnels feel safer.” Also, she said, “People were scared to go into the tunnels, and to be able to go there and look at art made it less scary.”
The tunnels protected patients and staff from Maine’s sometimes-hostile weather as they went between the psychiatric hospital’s dormitories and support buildings. They also were used for coal, laundry and food service deliveries and are still in use as conduits for utility lines. Desks and boxes are piled up in some portions, and peeling paint dangles from ceilings in older sections.
Intersections within the dimly lighted catacombs remain marked by traffic signs pointing to the barber shop, kitchen, canteen, sewing room and other destinations. One mural playfully shows a man with a flowing mop of brown, shaggy hair entering the barber shop, then leaving with his mane neatly buzzed.
With the former psychiatric hospital replaced by the new, 92-bed Riverview Psychiatric Center just south of AMHI, the tunnels are closed for general use. Brick and granite structures occupying the AMHI site have been upgraded and most transformed into state offices.
What was first known as Maine Insane Hospital opened in 1840. It is said to have been deliberately located across the Kennebec River from the State House so the governor and Legislature would always be reminded of its presence.
Ten years later, a devastating fire took the lives of 27 patients and one staff member. As the institution recovered, its patient population exploded, according to a history of AMHI by Margaret Fuller and Millard Howard. From the late 1800s into the early 1900s, an average of one new dormitory appeared per decade to keep up with space demands.
By 1955, AMHI bulged with 1,830 patients, 560 over capacity, according to George Whitaker Johnston in “The History of the Maine Insane Hospital.”
During the days of intense crowding, commuters who used AMHI’s back roads as a shortcut across the capital city would see patients shaking the bars on their windows and hollering to the outside, said Sawyer, who retired as head of information systems for the state mental health agency.
As a process of moving patients to communities took hold during the 1970s and AMHI’s population declined, many of the remaining patients were encouraged to express themselves through art and poetry, said Marya Faust of the mental health agency.
“When you see the artwork, some of it really shows people were plagued,” Sawyer said. “You can see the anguish really reflected in this.”
A painted verse reads, “Please don’t break down my fortress/ And expose my tender self./ I want to take my miseries and/ Put them on the shelf./ I have a little fortress/ Where I’ve hidden all my tears/ And all unpleasant memories/ And all my grief and fears.”
Mayers would like to see the underground murals preserved and the tunnels turned into a public gallery of sorts.
“It’s kind of a secret Augusta treasure,” she said.
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