Bethel Woods Orphanage

Bethel Woods Orphanage is the encompassing location for the story of Hours. It serves the dual purpose of taking care of the children, but also using them to study Shimmerings. Only children with the story's form of Autism are accepted. It is mentioned that there are many orphanages around the world similar to Bethel Woods.

History
Not much is known about the history of the orphanage, aside from that it is very old. It was established in 2023, according to the title on the map. It is old enough that the north quarter collapsed and was abandoned, and then forgotten that it ever existed. Based on a comment on the map, we know that part of it was destroyed in a fire in 2081, so it is over 60 years old at least.

Location
The exact location of Bethel Woods is never given. We do know that it is located in a mountainous and forested location. The west courtyard between the girls' and boys' dorm is full of White Pines, which are native to eastern North America but have been spread into mountains in Poland and the Czech Republic as well. There exists a Bethel, NY which could be the source of the orphanage and surrounding forest. However, with Hours being set so far in the future, no accurate conclusion can be drawn.

Layout
Bethel Woods is a very lage facility. Jessy Ribordy stated the orphanage itself stands at least 17 stories high. Along the west side are the girls' and boys' dorms, broken up by the White Pine Courtyard.

The east and west halves are broken up by the Column Wall, a very tall hallway filled with columns. The Brain is located in here, a central study where the Admin's can be found should any child need one. The north end of the column wall has the triangle of light where Seth retreats to at times.

The east side has the bulk of the facilities. It contains the kitchen, dining hall, library, class rooms, shop, boiler room, and houses all of the admin facilities. Shimmerings research is done on the top floors. It is unknown how much vertical space these places take up. To the north west lies the two gyms used by orphanage.

To the north is the maze of tunnels leading to the medium and the gym. The gym is very large, explained as being 300-400 meters long. Jessy Ribordy also stated that the gym is over a kilometer from the orphanage proper. If the lost north quarter begins at the north edge of the column wall, it could conceivably continue for far over a kilometer.

The orphanage is bordered on the south by Bethel Woods, for which it is named. Along the north side lies the Alpine Slopes.

Looking at the map, and knowing about height of the building, it is obvious that there are very large unused areas. It is unknown what is or was contained in these places, though the map makes several cryptic comments towards what may exist.

Population
Finn remarks in Chapter 2 that he has 50 something classmates. If we assume there are 50 children in every grade from K-12th, that places the count of children at 650. The numbers for the admins are unknown.

Jessy Ribordy's Kickstarter Comments
These are comments that Jessy made to backers on KickStarter who recieved the map.

"I wanted to make a couple notes about the map. I made sure to let Brian know that I wanted to portray just how remote the Gym (with the hole) was, in comparison to the rest of the orphanage. I believe he did a fantastic job of this because not only is the sheer magnitude of the Gym displayed, but the Alpine Slopes are in between the water turbine room and the Medium. This just basically means that the maze of tunnels leading through the lost North Quarter travel at least a kilometer before reaching the Medium.

And another detail to point out is that Bethel Woods Orphanage stands at least 17 stories high. So the block on the middle right hand side simply means that Shimmerings is located somewhere along the top floors, while the Admin headquarters are middle and bottom floors. This is also an important thing to keep in mind when you visualize the column wall. For although most of the orphanage is riddled with staircases and hallways and floors upon floors, the center area along the column wall and the foyer is a gap that rises all the way to the ceiling. Imagine it like the lobby of one of those big hotels that have the rooms in a curvature, stacked up along the inside. There was a place we stayed at in Nashville, while on tour, that looked something like what the foyer and teal colored section along the column wall would. Google: Hilton Nashville Downtown, and check out the lobby."