Institute of the Pennsylvania Hospital
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Institute of Pennsylvania Hospital
Kirkbride's Hospital |
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Market Street facade in 1959.
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| Location | 111 North 49th Street, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania |
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| Coordinates | 39°57′42″N 75°13′2″W / 39.96167°N 75.21722°WCoordinates: 39°57′42″N 75°13′2″W / 39.96167°N 75.21722°W |
| Built | 1841; 1859 |
| Architectural style | Neoclassical |
| NRHP Reference # | 66000684 |
| Significant dates | |
| Added to NRHP | October 15, 1966 |
| Designated NHL | June 23, 1965 |
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.
Two large hospital structures and an elaborate pleasure ground were built on a campus that stretched along the north side of Market Street, from 45th to 49th Streets. Thomas Story Kirkbride, the hospital's first superintendent and physician-in-chief, developed a more humane method of treatment for the mentally ill there, that became widely influential. The hospital's plan became a prototype for a generation of institutions for the treatment of the mentally nationwide. The surviving 1859 building was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1965.
In the late 1830s, the managers of Pennsylvania Hospital began erecting a large asylum to replace the hospital's crowded insane wards at 8th and Spruce Streets. The 101-acre (41 ha) site chosen was a former farm in the as-yet unincorporated district of West Philadelphia. The first structure for the Pennsylvania Asylum for the Insane was designed by Isaac Holden and was located near what is now 46th and Market Streets. Completed in 1841, the facility offered comforts and a "humane treatment" philosophy that set a standard for its day. Unlike other asylums where patients were often kept chained in crowded, unsanitary wards with little if any treatment, patients at the Pennsylvania Asylum resided in private rooms, received medical treatment, worked outdoors and enjoyed recreational activities including lectures and a use of the hospital library. The facility came to be called "Kirkbride's Hospital."
Superintendent Thomas Kirkbride developed his treatment philosophy based on research he conducted at other progressive asylums of the day, including the one in Worcester, as well as his deep-seated personal opinions regarding mental health and his experience at the Pennsylvania Asylum. Out of his philosophy emerged the Kirkbride Plan, which created a model design for psychiatric hospital buildings that was used across the United States throughout the 19th century. He described his system in great detail in his influential work, On the Construction, Organization, and General Arrangements of Hospitals for the Insane with Some Remarks on Insanity and Its Treatment (1854).
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