The new facility was planned from the start to utilize the "moral architecture" concepts of 1830s activists Thomas Story Kirkbride and Dorothea Dix.

The hospital was the first building in Tuscaloosa with gas lighting and central heat,[4] "all clad in a fashionable Italianate exterior.

He had studied mental-health care in Europe and worked in psychiatric hospitals in New Jersey, as well as his native state of South Carolina.

Alabama Governor Lurleen Wallace viewed the facility in February 1967, and was moved to tears after an overweight, mentally challenged nine-year-old attempted to hug her, crying, "Mama!

Bryce Hospital at that time had 5,200 patients living in conditions that a Montgomery Advertiser editor likened to a concentration camp.

In October 1970, Ricky Wyatt, a fifteen-year-old who had always been labeled a "juvenile delinquent" and housed at Bryce despite not being diagnosed with a mental illness, became the named plaintiff in a class-action lawsuit.

In 1971, the plaintiff class was expanded to include patients at Alabama's other inpatient mental health facilities, Searcy Hospital (Mt.

Wyatt v. Stickney's resulting court-ordered agreements formed the basis for federal minimum standards for the care of people with mental illness or developmental disabilities who reside in institutional settings.

Bob Riley and the Alabama Department of Mental Health on December 30, 2009, was worth $72 million in cash, including the construction of a replacement hospital, which was done under UA's supervision and direction.

The university pledged another $10 million to clean up environmental problems on the Bryce grounds and restore the main hospital building, construction of which started in 1853.

[11] In 2014, the remaining patients were moved to the new Bryce Hospital,[12] constructed on the former Partlow Center grounds,[13] and UA began a restoration project estimated at $40 million.