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Featured Article Of The Week
St. Peter State Hospital
The St. Peter State Hospital began in March 1866 when the Minnesota State Legislature responded to the need for an asylum by passing "an act for the establishment and location of a hospital for the insane in the state of Minnesota, and to provide for the regulation of the same." The act also created a board of trustees and appointed six commissioners responsible for recommending a permanent location for the state's hospital. A number of Minnesota communities vied for the facility and each claimed to be the most attractive village. However, on 1 July 1866, the commissioners made their recommendation. They opted for St. Peter as the permanent site. Citizens of that community purchased a 210 acre farm for $7,000 which was given to the state for the purpose. Shortly after the commission's report was filed, the board of trustees purchased the Ewing house in St. Peter for temporary use until construction was completed on the permanent hospital. The board of trustees estimated that the refurbished Ewing house with accommodations for fifty patients would exceed the state's demands for years.
The Minnesota State Hospital for Insane accepted its first patient on 6 December 1866 and received more patients from Iowa on 28 December. In its first annual report to the governor, the board referred to the problem that would reoccur in the hospital's history for over the next 100 years. The original estimates of the board had proven incorrect as overcrowding had become the foremost problem two months after the hospital opened. In the spring of 1867, after a reorganization of the board of trustees, construction began on a temporary frame building adjacent to the Ewing property and when completed would house an additional fifty patients. In 1867, the board adopted the "Linear Plan" for the permanent hospital consisting of a center building with attached sections. Click here for more...
