The Institute of the Pennsylvania Hospital
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The Institute of the Pennsylvania Hospital ("Kirkbride's") was a psychiatric hospital located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania at 49th and Market St., which operated from its founding in 1841 until 1997. The Institute was built to replace Pennsylvania Hospital’s crowded insane wards located at 8th and Spruce Streets. Thomas Story Kirkbride, its first superintendent, developed a more humane method of treatment for the mentally ill that became widely influential. Today, the former Institute campus exists as a multi-purpose social-service facility.
The new hospital, located in a bucolic 101-acre (0.41 km²) tract of the as yet unincorporated district of West Philadelphia, 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 Pennsylvania Hospital resided in private rooms, received medical treatment, worked outdoors and enjoyed recreational activities including lectures and a use of the hospital library.
Superintendent Kirkbride developed his treatment philosophy based on research he conducted at other progressive asylums of the day including the asylum at Worcester, Massachusetts. 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. This plan was used for the hospital’s Department for Males constructed a short distance from the original buildings in 1859. The hospital continued to expand throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, eventually consolidating all treatment at the Department for Males site in 1959. At this time the institute was also known as Pennsylvania Hospital for the Insane.
The Institute was located in what is now the Mill Creek neighborhood. It continued operations until 1997 when, in the face of shrinking revenues from insurance providers, Pennsylvania Hospital sold the West Philadelphia facility and moved back to the 8th Street location. Deteriorated since its closure, a portion of the grounds were sold for commercial development in 2001.
