Dixmont State Hospital
Dixmont State Hospital was a hospital located northwest of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Built in 1862, Dixmont was once a state-of-the-art institution known for its highly self-sufficient and park-like campus, but a decline in funding for state hospitals and changing philosophies in psychiatric care caused the hospital to be closed in 1984. After more than two decades of abandonment, it was demolished in 2006. The campus spanned a total of. Reed Hall is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
History
Early years
The Western Pennsylvania Hospital at Pittsburgh ended its first year of operation in 1853, and it was evident that there were a greater number of patients in jails and charitable housing than could be provided for in the 26 beds designated for that express purpose at the hospital. Managers of the hospital used a $10,000 appropriation from the state to purchase a large amount of farmland on a hill overlooking the Ohio River to the north of Pittsburgh in what is now suburban Kilbuck. Planners originally wanted to build the institution in the city, but this idea was rejected by Dorothea Dix. Construction began in 1859, and opened in 1862. A grand ceremony took place on July 19, 1859, where the cornerstone of the Dixmont Kirkbride building was laid in the foundation. A glass jar was placed in the cornerstone containing numerous objects, papers, and a letter from Dorothea Dix herself. Also contained was a copy of her 1845 "Memorial", the 55-page county by county study of the conditions for the mentally ill in Pennsylvania, which had a great part in jump-starting early mental health care reform in Pennsylvania. Unfortunately, when the time capsule was recovered prior to demolition, the jar had broken and many of the contents were in poor condition. The original patient population of the hospital was a meager 113 patients who were transferred from the Western Pennsylvania Hospital in Pittsburgh. Before the 1800s were over, somewhere between 1,200 and 1,500 patients called the hospital home. In 1907, the facility was individually incorporated as the Dixmont Hospital for the Insane after separating from the Western Pennsylvania Hospital system. Dixmont was completely self-sustained from the beginning. It had its own farmlands, livestock, rail station, and post office. Also part of the facility was a water treatment plant, a sewage treatment plant, and electricity generating facilities. They had their own butchers, bakers, farmhands, electricians, laborers, pipe fitters, botanists, chefs, and even a barber and a dentist.Financial troubles
Like many psychiatric hospitals, Dixmont became overcrowded during the 1920s due to the rise of posttraumatic stress disorder patients from World War I. The hospital took in as many patients as they could fit until beds lined the hallways, but was eventually forced to stop accepting new admissions. Dixmont began experiencing financial difficulties as early as the Great Depression where they could only afford to supply employees with room and board; no salary. In 1946, the PA Department of Welfare had to step in and Dixmont became a state-owned hospital. During this time, the hospital began using previously decried procedures such as lobotomies, electro-shock therapy, and use of restraints.By the mid-1970s, Dixmont had reached financial crisis due to the state's desire to shut down the hospital. As the concept of deinstitutionalization and use of Thorazine progressed, large state institutions were becoming obsolete and patient numbers decreased rapidly. With the patients' rights movement, they were no longer allowed to work for profit, something which had previously generated the hospital revenue. Many of the buildings were in need of renovation, but state funding was scarce. By 1983, several floors of Reed Hall were empty and unused buildings such as the canteen and men's annex were demolished to prevent fire hazards. In July 1984, the hospital was closed down and the 300 remaining patients were transferred to nearby institutions.
Post-closure and demolition
Shortly after the hospital's closure, several proposals were made to reuse the facilities; the leading bid was St. John's General Hospital which planned to use the geriatric and infirmary buildings to house a 200-bed nursing home and Reed Hall as independent senior-citizen living. Several proposals were also made to upgrade Dixmont's sewage treatment plant for use with Kilbuck Township. However, none of these plans came to fruition. From 1985 to 1988, Holy Family Institute leased the Cammarata building as a temporary home after their facility was damaged by fire. In the late-1980s, plans were set in place to build a county jail on the site of Dixmont. However, the proposal was unpopular with local residents and the plan was canceled in 1989. By 1999, time and many fires had left the crumbling building useless, and the State sold the property to a private owner. In 2005, a local developer made an agreement to convert the of that land that contained most of the buildings and demolition began in preparation for a shopping center that would be anchored by a Walmart Supercenter. Subsequent excavation destabilized the hillside and landslides covered Pennsylvania Route 65 and the Pittsburgh Line railroad tracks on the Ohio River side, shutting them both down for weeks. After numerous complaints by Kilbuck Township residents for fear of another collapse, due to the instability of the "rebuilt" landslide as well as interest in the nearby borough of Economy to build a Walmart in order to help revitalize the dilapidated Northern Lights Shopping Center located next door to that proposed Walmart site, Walmart decided not to build on the property on September 26, 2007, and the land was left to return to nature.Even if Walmart hadn't bought the property, the Hospital would have likely been demolished anyway, due to teenagers dangerously trespassing on the property on a regular basis as well as the buildings containing both asbestos insulation and lead paint, both of which have since been outlawed for health reasons, and in the case of asbestos, has been getting removed from buildings since the 1980s. In addition, Pennsylvania law prohibits the state from selling grave sites, so the hospital's own cemetery, in which many of the patients were buried with simple stones marked only with index numbers, remains state-owned. The purchasers of the Dixmont property own the log book that identifies the markers with each patient and their number and have made the information available.