This article needs to be updated. The reason given is: Further information on the redevelopment project is needed..(April 2021) |
Central State Hospital | |
---|---|
Geography | |
Location | 2800–3300 blocks of West Washington Street Indianapolis, Indiana, United States |
Coordinates | 39°46′09″N86°12′40″W / 39.7693°N 86.2112°W |
Organization | |
Type | Specialist |
Services | |
Beds | 2500 |
Speciality | Psychiatric hospital |
History | |
Opened | 1848 |
Closed | 1994 |
Links | |
Website | Indiana Medical History Museum |
Lists | Hospitals in the United States |
Central State Hospital, formerly referred to as the Central Indiana Hospital for the Insane, was a psychiatric treatment hospital in Indianapolis, Indiana. The hospital was established in 1848 to treat patients from anywhere in the state, but by 1905, with the establishment of psychiatric hospitals in other parts of Indiana, Central State served only the counties in the middle of the state. In 1950, it had 2,500 patients. Allegations of abuse, funding shortfalls, and the move to less institutional methods of treatment led to its closure in 1994. Since then efforts have been made to redevelop the site for various uses.
The Indiana legislature authorized the establishment of a "hospital for the insane" as early as 1827, but the actual construction of a facility was delayed for several years. The Indiana Hospital for the Insane finally opened in November 1848 with a total of five patients. At that time, the hospital consisted of one brick building situated on a large parcel of land of over 100 acres (0.40 km2) on Washington Street, west of downtown Indianapolis. In 1889, the hospital was renamed the Central Indiana Hospital for the Insane. After 1926 it was known as Central State Hospital, and by 1928, physicians cared for nearly 2,500 patients.
From 1848 to 1948, the hospital grew yearly until it encompassed two massive ornate buildings (one for male and one for female patients); a pathological department (which now hosts the Indiana Medical History Museum); a hospital for the "sick insane" for the treatment of physical ailments; a farm colony where patients engaged in "occupational therapy"; a chapel; an amusement hall complete with an auditorium, billiards, and bowling alleys; a bakery; a firehouse; a cannery staffed by patients; and idyllic gardens and fountains.
The more ornate of the two massive buildings became known as "Seven Steeples". This building, which housed female patients, was designed using the Kirkbride Plan for mental healthcare facilities.
For a half-century, these complex buildings and gardens housed mentally ill patients from all regions of Indiana. By 1905, however, the state had built mental health institutions in Evansville, Logansport, Madison, and Richmond, thereby relieving an overcrowded Central State Hospital of some of its patient load and leaving it to treat only those from the "central district", an area of 38 counties situated in the middle portion of the state. In 1950 the patient population reached 2,500; its largest capacity.
By the early 1970s, most of the hospital's ostentatious buildings had been declared unsound and razed. The Men's Department Building (not a Kirkbride design, but instead known as Straight Block, although it had the same goal of providing patients with access to a window for sunlight and fresh air) had already been demolished over 12 years ending in 1941. In their place, the state constructed brick buildings of a nondescript, institutional genre. These modern buildings and the medical staff therein continued to serve the state's mentally ill until allegations of patient abuse and funding troubles sparked an effort to forge new alternatives to institutionalization, which, in turn, led to the hospital's closure in 1994.
The grounds of Central State Hospital were still largely vacant as of 2011. In place of the demolished Women's Ward (Seven Steeples) is a large lawn. There are approximately ten buildings on the grounds that were associated with the hospital. The Pathology Department building, built in 1895, is well preserved and houses the Indiana Medical History Museum. The three more modern wards (Evans, Bolton, and Bahr) were built in 1974 when the others were demolished. The oldest building on the property is the old power house, built in 1886. The Administration building, which was built in 1938, is now the structure most commonly associated with the hospital, although it never housed patients. In 2005, the Beckmann Theatre was granted temporary occupancy of the 1895 Laundry Building for staging its production of Asylum. [10] More recently, the building was used for storing cars.
The Indiana State Archives, the Indiana State Library, and the Indiana Medical History Museum are preserving the history of an institution that served the mentally ill of Indiana for 146 years.
In March 2003, the city of Indianapolis purchased the property from the state for $400,000. The land that was acquired consists of 160 acres (0.65 km2) located on the city's westside at the 2800-3300 blocks of West Washington Street. [11]
In December 2006, the city approved the sale the Central State Hospital site to a developer for just over $2 million. The developer began further negotiations with the city to determine the future uses, including apartments, shops, and green space. [12] [13] About six months later the developers sought to buy another 33 acres (130,000 m2) from the city, at a cost of $223,500. [14] [15]
In late 2013, several buildings, including the former Administrative Building as well as the prominent Powerhouse, were purchased by a company known for refurbishing buildings otherwise left to waste. The project to turn the administrative building into student apartments began in January 2014, with some students moving in by September 2014 as construction continued. The building is now named Central State Mansion and retains original features of the architecture as well as decorations suggestive of its history.[ citation needed ]
The site is the subject of the 2006 film Central State: Asylum for the Insane, [16] a documentary produced and directed by independent filmmaker Dan T. Hall of Vizmo Films. [17]
As of December 2022, only three of the original structures remain: the 1886 power plant, the 1895 pathology building, and a building of unidentified use.
Barnwood House Hospital was a private mental hospital in Barnwood, Gloucester, England. It was founded by the Gloucester Asylum Trust in 1860 as Barnwood House Institution and later became known as Barnwood House Hospital. The hospital catered for well-to-do patients, with reduced terms for those in financial difficulties. It was popular with the military and clergy, and once counted an archbishop amongst its patients. During the late nineteenth century Barnwood House flourished under superintendent Frederick Needham, making a healthy profit and receiving praise from the Commissioners in Lunacy. Even the sewerage system was held up as a model of good asylum practice. After the First World War service patients, including war poet and composer Ivor Gurney, were treated with a regime of psychotherapy and recreations such as cricket.
The Danvers State Hospital, also known as the State Lunatic Hospital at Danvers, The Danvers Lunatic Asylum, and The Danvers State Insane Asylum, was a psychiatric hospital located in Danvers, Massachusetts. It was built in 1874, and opened in 1878, under the supervision of prominent Boston architect Nathaniel Jeremiah Bradlee, on an isolated site in rural Massachusetts. It was a multi-acre, self-contained psychiatric hospital designed and built according to the Kirkbride Plan.
Bryce Hospital opened in 1861 in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, United States. It is Alabama's oldest and largest inpatient psychiatric facility. First known as the Alabama State Hospital for the Insane and later as the Alabama Insane Hospital, the building is considered an architectural model. The hospital houses 268 beds for acute care, treatment and rehabilitation of full-time (committed) patients. The Mary Starke Harper Geriatric Psychiatry Hospital, a separate facility on the same campus, provides an additional 100 beds for inpatient geriatric care. The main facility was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1977.
The Richardson Olmsted Campus in Buffalo, New York, United States, was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1986. The site was designed by the American architect Henry Hobson Richardson in concert with the famed landscape team of Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux in the late 1800s, incorporating a system of treatment for people with mental illness developed by Dr. Thomas Story Kirkbride known as the Kirkbride Plan. Over the years, as mental health treatment changed and resources were diverted, the buildings and grounds began a slow deterioration. By 1974, the last patients were removed from the historic wards. On June 24, 1986, the former Buffalo State Asylum for the Insane was added to the National Historic Landmark registry. In 2006, the Richardson Center Corporation was formed to restore the buildings.
Logansport State Hospital is a psychiatric hospital located in Logansport, Indiana, United States.
The Crownsville Hospital Center was a psychiatric hospital located in Crownsville, Maryland. It was in operation from 1911 until 2004.
Oregon State Hospital is a public psychiatric hospital in the U.S. state of Oregon, located in the state's capital city of Salem with a smaller satellite campus in Junction City opened in 2014. Founded in 1862 and constructed in the Kirkbride Plan design in 1883, it is the oldest operating psychiatric hospital in the state of Oregon, and one of the oldest continuously operated hospitals on the West Coast.
Central State Hospital is a 192-bed adult psychiatric hospital located in the Lakeland neighborhood of Louisville, Kentucky.
The Institute of Pennsylvania Hospital, also known as Kirkbride's Hospital or the Pennsylvania Hospital for Mental and Nervous Diseases, was a psychiatric hospital located at 48th and Haverford Streets in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. It operated from its founding in 1841 until 1997. The remaining building, now called the Kirkbride Center is now part of the Blackwell Human Services Campus.
The Indiana Medical History Museum is an Indianapolis monument to the beginning of psychiatric medical research. It is located on the grounds of what was formerly Central Indiana Hospital for the Insane, later shortened to Central State Hospital. It was placed on the National Register of Historic Places on April 25, 1972, as the Old Pathology Building.
The Norwich State Hospital, originally established as the Norwich State Hospital for the Insane, later shortened to the Norwich Hospital, was a psychiatric hospital located in Preston and Norwich, Connecticut. It opened its doors in October 1904 and operated until October 10, 1996. Throughout the near-century it operated, it housed geriatric patients, chemically dependent patients, and from 1931-1939, tubercular patients. The hospital, which sits on the banks of the Thames River, began with a single building on 100 acres of land, and expanded to over 30 buildings and 900 acres at its peak. A 70 acre property including the hospital was listed as a historic district on the National Register of Historic Places in 1988.
Asylum architecture in the United States, including the architecture of psychiatric hospitals, affected the changing methods of treating the mentally ill in the nineteenth century: the architecture was considered part of the cure. Doctors believed that ninety percent of insanity cases were curable, but only if treated outside the home, in large-scale buildings. Nineteenth-century psychiatrists considered the architecture of asylums, especially their planning, to be one of the most powerful tools for the treatment of the insane, targeting social as well as biological factors to facilitate the treatment of mental illnesses. The construction and usage of these quasi-public buildings served to legitimize developing ideas in psychiatry. About 300 psychiatric hospitals, known at the time as insane asylums or colloquially as “loony bins” or “nuthouses,” were constructed in the United States before 1900. Asylum architecture is notable for the way similar floor plans were built in a wide range of architectural styles.
Eastern State Hospital is a psychiatric hospital established in 1891 in Medical Lake, a small community 20 miles (32 km) southwest of Spokane, Washington. The original building was a Kirkbride Plan, and the current building has a similar floor plan with male and female wings extending out from the main building.
The Elgin Mental Health Center is a mental health facility operated by the State of Illinois in Elgin, Illinois. Throughout its history, Elgin's mission has changed. At times, it treated mental illness, tuberculosis, and provided federally funded care for veterans. The hospital's site, which included a patient-staffed farm reached a maximum of 1,139 acres (461 ha) after World War II. Its maximum population was reached in the mid 1950s with 7,700 patients. Between 1993 and 2008, most of the older buildings in the complex were demolished due to being in poor condition as the result of being abandoned for decades. The site is/was popular among teens and in the paranormal world due to its claims of hauntings in the older buildings and the hospital's cemetery.
The Jacksonville Developmental Center was an institution for developmentally delayed clients, located in Jacksonville, Illinois. It was open from 1851 to November 2012. As of December 2012, the 134-acre (54 ha) grounds was still owned by the State of Illinois.
The Utah State Hospital (USH) is a mental hospital located in eastern Provo, Utah. The current superintendent is Dallas Earnshaw.
Middletown State Homeopathic Hospital was a hospital for the treatment of mental disorders located in Middletown, New York. It opened on April 20, 1874, and was the first purely homeopathic hospital for mental disorders in the United States. The hospital, which served "mentally ill patients from Orange, Sullivan and Ulster Counties". employed a number of new techniques for the treatment of mental disorders, most notably the use of baseball as a therapy.
Luther Vose Bell, M.D. was one of the thirteen mental hospital superintendents who met in Philadelphia in 1844 to organize the Association of Medical Superintendents of American Institutions for the Insane (AMSAII), now the American Psychiatric Association, and the first medical specialty society in the United States. He was also Superintendent of the McLean Asylum near Boston, from 1837 to 1855.
Brisbane General Hospital Precinct is a heritage-listed hospital precinct at 40 Bowen Bridge Road, Herston, City of Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. It was built from 1875 to 1941. It includes six historic buildings associated with the Royal Brisbane and Women's Hospital and the former Royal Children's Hospital, as well as aspects of their grounds and landscaping. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 28 March 2003. A number of buildings in the precinct, in particular the Lady Lamington Nurses Home, will be redeveloped as part of the Herston Quarter development.
The Maine Insane Hospital, later the Augusta Mental Health Institute (AMHI), was a psychiatric hospital in Augusta, Maine. It was the principal facility for the care and treatment of Maine's mentally ill from 1840 to 2004, and its surviving buildings represent the oldest surviving complex of mental care facilities in the United States. The complex is located on the east bank of the Kennebec River, immediately south of the former Kennebec Arsenal, and now primarily houses state offices. In 2004, the hospital was replaced by the Riverview Psychiatric Center, located just to the south. The hospital's core complex was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982, with the listing enlarged to encompass the entire campus in 2001.