A recent episode of the podcast 99% Invisible tackles the history of the Kirkbride plan. As the episode summary describes,

Today, there are more than a hundred abandoned asylums in the United States, many of them not all that different from Buffalo State. It’s one of the reasons we’re all so familiar with the idea of the big empty asylum in the woods. Few stop to wonder where all these structures came from, but, in fact,  all of this was part of a treatment regimen developed by a singular Philadelphia doctor, a physician who was obsessed with architecture and how it could be harnessed therapeutically to cure those who’d become insane.

The full episode can be found here.