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Vintage Postcards of Indiana Health FacilitiesIndiana State Hospital for the Insane%u2014%u2014Indianapolis Indiana%u2014%u2014Established 1848The Indiana legislature authorized a facility for the mentally ill as early as 1827, but the Indiana Hospitalfor the Insane (later re-named Central State Hospital) did not open until 1848.Starting in a single brick building on over a hundred acres at the edge of Indianapolis, the Indianapolis Hospital for the Insane was the state%u2019s first facility dedicated solely to the treatment of the mentally ill. Over it%u2019s long history, it grew and expanded, with a massive Seven Steeples Building constructed on the Kirkbride Plan to separately house men and women. It became a true campus, with a hospital for physical ailments, a farm with a cannery, a chapel, bakery, firehouse, decorative gardens, fountains, and a greenhouse. There was even an amusement hall with an auditorium, billiards, and a bowling alley. For decades, this was Indiana%u2019s only insane hospital. Then, by 1905, due to its overcrowding, asylums had been built in Evansville, Logansport, Madison, and Richmond. The Indianapolis hospital then served only individuals from its surrounding 38 counties. At it%u2019s peak, the Central State Hospital, as it was later called, could accommodate over 2,500 patients. During the 1800s, treatment at the facility was often primitive. Screaming inmates, or those deemed too aggressive, were confined to %u201cdungeons.%u201d Even regular wards %u201cwere without adequate or intelligent provision for light, heat, or ventilation.%u201d Typically, patients slept on %u201cbeds of straw upon forbidding skeletons of iron.%u201d The hospital grounds included a cemetery where those who died while under care were commonly interred. The first burial was in September of 1855 and the last in September of 1947. It%u2019s estimated that the cemetery holds around 4,000 graves. Yet with no markers and incomplete records, the true number will never be known. By the late 1970s, many of the hospital%u2019s Victorianera buildings%u2014now much deteriorated%u2014were razed and replaced by nondescript, institutional-looking, flat-roofed brick structures. Because of allegations of patient abuse, funding difficulties, and a rapid shift to treating patients outside the confines of mental facilities with medications, the Indianapolis hospital was permanently closed on June 30, 1994. Most of the remaining structures were torn down, even the newer ones. The historic Pathology Building has survived, and now functions as a museum.Asylums and Institutions