Bedlam in Penn’s Woods

Pennsylvanians have been concerned with the welfare of the insane since the earli­est provincial days. Indeed, as befits the Commonwealth’s humanitarian Quaker heritage, Pennsylvania has made pio­neering efforts in the field. For most of the pre­Revolutionary period, care of the mad was restricted to physical support and occa­sional confinement for public safety. Victims’ families...
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Lost and Found

Lost For nearly a century and a half, Reed Hall – designed in 1862 by J. W. Kerr according to prevailing recommendations for asylum construction by reformer Thomas Story Kirkbride – dominated the grounds of Dixmont State Hospital in Allegheny County, near Pitts­burgh. Founded originally as the Western Pennsylvania Hospital for the Insane in 1853, the facility occupied four hundred...
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