Photo: "E"

Hallway inside the main building at Weston State Hospital.

Weston State Hospital was opened to patients in 1864. Originally designed to house 250 patients in solitude, Weston State reached 717 patients by 1880.

Photo: "Caged"

Inside the isolation cells at Weston State Hospital. 

In 1858, when plans to construct a mental hospital in West Virginia began, the state called upon two experts in the treatment of the mentally ill: Francis T. Striblin of Eastern Virginia and Dr. Thomas Kirkbride, Superintendent of the Pennsylvania Hospital for the Insane. They designed a plan for a hospital that would house 250 patients and architect R. Snowden Andrews executed the concept. The proposal, based on the Kirkbride Plan, was estimated to cost $395,000.

Photo: "Rabbit Hole"

The first patients were admitted to Weston State Hospital in 1864. This Kirkbride was the first West Virginia state funded building and deemed the largest hand cut stone masonry building in North America.

Photo: "Playhouse"

Trenton Psychiatric Hospital was established in 1848 by health activist Dorthea Dix and was the first state run mental hospital in New Jersey and the first public mental hospital designed on the Kirkbride plan.