Elgin State Hospital
Elgin State Hospital opened as the Illinois Northern Hospital for the Insane in 1872. The architect of the Kirkbride building was Stephen Vaughn Shipman. Shipman also designed Kirkbrides in Anna, Illinois; Independence, Iowa; Oshkosh, Wisonsin; and Mendota, Wisconsin.
The Elgin asylum was located just south of Elgin, on the west bank of the Fox River. The Kirkbride was originally designed to house 300 patients.
The building was demolished in 1993.
Other names for this hospital:
- Illinois Northern Hospital for the Insane
- Elgin Mental Health Center
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Blog Posts
- State Hospital Stories Out of Time
- Last week someone on the forum posted a link to a Time Magazine Story which mentioned Traverse City State Hospital. It gave me the idea to check for more stories concerning state...
- Archive.org Documents
- While doing a little digging around on Archive.org this evening I found a few Kirkbride- and asylum-related documents. First are two books about the Kirkbride family: A Brief...
- Famous Kirkbride Building Residents
- Rummaging around online as I do all too often, I've come across a few famous names in connection with different Kirkbride hospitals—as patients I mean. I thought it would be...
