Disclaimer: The MTS Memorial Museum website is currently under construction, as we continue to learn more about Mansfield Training School and its residents. During this time, we intend to place the accessibility of our website at the forefront as we aim to work in coordination with UConn’s IT Accessibility office to complete a holistic access review of all components of the MTS Memorial Museum website. Thank you!
The Mansfield Training School Memorial Museum aims to preserve the nearly erased, and over 100-year long, history of the Mansfield Training School in order to remember the lives, voices, and experiences of those who were institutionalized here. With deep-rooted cross-institutional connections to universities, hospitals, and government agencies across the State of Connecticut, the Mansfield Training School and its history reveals the treatment, attitudes, and discrimination experienced by people with disabilities throughout the 20th century, up until its closure in 1993.
Image Description:
The first five photos from Mansfield Training School are in black and white and are largely from the first half of the 20th century.
Image 1: The first photo shows six girls in a line, dancing in flowy dresses outside on the MTS lawn (1939).
Image 2: The next photo is of the former superintendent of MTS, Neil A. Dayton, with 17 men dressed in suits, standing and sitting around the blueprints for a newly constructed dorm hall on the grounds of Mansfield Training School.
Image 3: Watching as the previous blueprints become a reality, we have the newly constructed dorm area for residents in the third photo. It depicts about 19 beds for residents, packed tightly together in groups of two and three, separated only by a metal chair and night stand. Each group of beds is separated from the rest by a very short metal partition offering very little for privacy.
Image 4: The fourth photo shows the laundry room at MTS. Here, women are working on washing and ironing the clothing. Many residents worked in these laundry rooms during their time as residents of MTS.
Image 5: The last black and white photo is of a UConn student volunteer cutting a resident’s hair as she sits at a round wooden table in what appears to be a library. Over the course of the last five to ten years of its operation, UConn sent over 300 volunteers to MTS for a wide array of programs.
The last two photos are from 2022 and are in color.
Image 6: The first photo is of an unmarked brick building with a metal chain-link fence around it. Some of the windows of the building are broken and others are painted with spray paint graffiti. Several of the windows also have what seem to be curtains left hanging from when MTS was operational, now sunbleached and decayed to the point of near-transparency.
Image 7: The final photo shows a closer view of the brick building, with a tree growing out of a broken window. In the window next to the tree hangs more curtains, very weathered.
Mansfield Training School Today
As of today, many of the abandoned buildings across the 350-acre MTS campus remain untouched since their closure. Transferred to the University of Connecticut in 1994, the buildings once served as storage for the university but due to lack of maintenance, they continue to deteriorate. MTS today is known by many students for its “haunted” nature, however few know the true history of the lives of those who lived here…
Latest Posts and Updates
- Experiencing the Archives!
- MTS Team Live Reading: “The Mansfield Training School Is Closed: The Swamp Has Been Finally Drained” by Roger D. MacNamara
- Places of Waiting
- In the Archives…
- Why I’m Here -Brenda
The Mansfield Training School Memorial and Museum 
Might be nice if the visitor to this website could find the ADDRESS of the Memorial and Museum…
LikeLike
Hello John Wiley — there is no physical memorial or museum! the website itself is the memorial and museum. However, it was our hope that putting up the website and eventually convening an advisory board for the Mansfield Training School Project (which will happen in May 2026 finally) we might be able to lobby UConn to establish such a memorial at the “depot campus” and also to dedicate a room somewhere as the museum.
LikeLike
Hi there! This is such an impressive and interesting venture. Thanks to you all for your dedication and hard work!
I am working on my own passion project after finding a child-uncle of mine buried and forgotten in an institution cemetery a century ago. Since this, I have been compiling a comprehensive national database of similar defunct institutions for “insane, Feeble-minded, etc” across the USA for the purpose of locating and identifying deceased ancestors. It seems impossible there would be a dedicated morgue on premise of MTS and so many references to influenza death and abuse but no graveyard on site or information about deceased residents. I have pored over everything I can find on this institution and found NOTHING. Can you illuminate this issue for me, generally? I understand HIPAA law prevents identifying information in most cases.
On most institutional grounds or local cemeteries, graves/bodies are confined to rough estimates. It is rare that any institution kept and maintained good record. Nevertheless, I would very much appreciate any information you could provide on the subject. Have the grounds been scanned?
Thank you for your time and help.
Jess Plesko Dahl, MA, M.Ed, BCBA, TxLBA
LikeLike