Central State Hospital (Indiana)
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| Established | 1896 |
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| Location | 2800–3300 blocks of West Washington Street Indianapolis, Indiana |
| Website | Indiana Medical History Museum |
Central State Hospital, formally referred to as the Central Indiana Hospital for the Insane was a psychiatric treatment hospital in Indianapolis, Indiana.
The Indiana legislature authorized the establishment of a "hospital for the insane" as early as 1827, but 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 3,000 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; a "sick" hospital 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 fire house; a cannery manned by patients; and idyllic gardens and fountains.
The more ornate of the two massive buildings came to be known as "the Seven Steeples". This building, which housed female patients, was designed using the Kirkbride Plan for mental healthcare facilities.
For a half-century, this 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 patient population reached 2,500
By the early 1970s, most of the hospital's ostentatious Victorian-era buildings had been declared unsound and razed. The Men's Department Building (also a Kirkbride Plan struction) had been demolished already 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.
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