Photos: Exploring Illinois' Abandoned Psychiatric Hospitals

By Hale Goetz in News on Apr 1, 2016 3:59PM

A chair abandoned in Manteno State Hospital's tunnel system. Founded in the 1920s, the hospital planned a structure with blocks of cottages meant to create a sense of community. However, stories about deaths caused by malpractice continue to surface long after its closing.

Here is an asylum corridor in Manteno State Hospital. The campus took up one full square mile, making it the largest mental hospital in Illinois. Located 50 miles Southwest of Chicago, most its patients came from Cook County. It was opened in the 1920s to ease overcrowding in other hospitals, but decades later it, too, was overcrowded (and typhoid outbreak). It was closed in 1985.

Many of Manteno's buildings have been demolished, and some have been repurposed.

The VA has taken over large swaths of the former Manteno State Hospital campus and destroyed or rehabbed many buildings. The administrative building, which now houses HomeStar Bank, <a href="http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/seeking-asylum/Content?oid=913631">according to the Chicago Reader</a>.

On September 4, 1879, Illinois Eastern Hospital was opened in Kankakee, Illinois, which is southwest of Chicago and just south of Manteno, the site of another mental health institution. Photographer Matt Tuteur notes, "There are underground utility tunnels linking every building throughout the entire property."

It later became Kankakee Mental Institution, and it was designed by H.W.S. Cleveland. The design allowed patients to be grouped based on their treatments, and it was regarded as a forward-thinking facility that cast off 19th century practices. This image was taken from a second-floor hallway.

By the 1970s, Kankakee’s patients receiving mental health treatment were transferred away, and the emphasis was on treating the developmentally disabled. This image was also taken from a second-floor hallway.

The Peoria State Hospital was once called the Illinois Asylum for the Incurably Insane, but it had high hopes for being a different kind of asylum, implementing theories of “non-imprisonment, non-restraint, and non-resistance." This is a dilapidated ward.

A local newspaper in 1910 joked of the hospital often referred to as Bartonville, "There is a grave fear that Dr. Zeller may make things so attractive down at the Bartonville asylum that it will be a real pleasure to become insane."

Despite attempts to rescue the building as both a historic area and a 'haunted" tour, the last of Peoria State Hospital's buildings—the Bowen Building, which was the site of both lobotomies and autopsies—recently began demolition, <a href="http://www.cinewsnow.com/news/local/SPECIAL-REPORT-The-Final-Days-of-the-Bowen-Building-368124011.html">according to a local TV station.</a>

The patient cemetery of Peoria State Hospital.

Opened in 1958, Tinley Park Mental Health Center still stands on its 280-acre lot, abandoned and in pretty rough shape today. <a href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/daily-southtown/news/ct-sta-tinley-tif-district-st-0319-20150318-story.html">The Tribune cites a report saying</a> the property is plagued by asbestos, the soil is contaminated by mercury, there’s an abandoned sewage plant and leaking underground storage tanks full of toxic chemicals.

The surrounding buildings of Tinley Park are still functional, but the mental health center went on the chopping block in 2012 due to a lack of funding from the state, according to <a href="http://patch.com/illinois/tinleypark/a-ec8223af">Tinley Park Patch</a>. This photo was taken in the hospital's tunnel system.

Since Tinley Park, a community southwest of Chicago, purchased the facility from the state, plans to renovate the mental health center have been underway.

Tinley Park asked its residents for input January on <a href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/daily-southtown/news/ct-sta-tinley-mental-health-meeting-st-0129-20160128-story.html">how they'd like the property developed</a>.

Prentice Women’s Hospital paired gynecological facilities with mental health facilities. Here is a patient room in the hospital. Architect Bertrand Goldberg attempted to bring a humanistic approach to his planned space, placing patients' bedrooms close to their caregivers' stations, <a href="http://www.preservationnation.org/who-we-are/press-center/national-treasures-resources/Prentice_Chicago-Landmark-Nomination_FINAL.pdf">according to Preservation Nation</a>

Demolition of the Prentice Women’s Hospital was completed in 2014, only 39 years after its creation. This is a procedure room.

Photographer Matt Tuteur was able to photograph Henry Horner Children's Center before it was demolished. Later when he returned, he noted, “All that remained were flat grey slabs of concrete. It was almost as if it never existed.” The center was the wing of the Chicago Read-Mental Health Center, and it served children and adolescents with mental health issues.

The site of Henry Horner Children's Center has a long and notorious history in Chicago lore. Since the mid-19th century, it was the site of Chicago State Hospital, The Cook County Insane Asylum and eventually the Chicago-Read Mental Health Center, but old-timers refer to it as simply as “Dunning.”

Henry Horner Children’s Center was the center of quite a lot of scrutiny. In 1986, the ACLU sent a probe to investigate charges of overcrowding, poor care and whether the building was structurally sound. In 1990, the Chicago Reader wrote an expose called <a href=”http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/the-making-of-a-hellhole/Content?oid=876568”>“The Making Of A Hellhole.</a>

Chicago Read-Mental Health Center site lost its accreditation in 1993, <a href=”http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1993-10-15/news/9310150278_1_mental-hospital-accreditation-healthcare-organizations”>according to the Chicago Tribune</a>.

Abandoned psychiatric institutions linger in the bustling landscape of Chicago and its outskirts, their shells the relics of a past era. Dr. Johnny Williamson, current medical director of the Community Counseling Centers of Chicago (commonly referred to as C4), tells Chicagoist that these emptied buildings are a window to the past.

"I think we learn a lot about what we've done when we look at places we've abandoned," Williamson says. "You can see what happened there and compare to where we are."

In the images above, photographer Matt Tuteur captures the aftermath of the boom of mental health care facilities around the turn of the last century. To follow the trail of these abandoned facilities, it's easiest to start at the beginning.

Before the 19th century, doctors thought isolation was the best solution for mental illness. The mentally ill were viewed as religiously sick—either through possession or a lack of faith. This attitude began to change with the efforts of American activist Dorothea Dix, who partook in what was known as the "lunacy reform" in Great Britain. She returned home to the States to investigate the current state of mental health care facilities, which lacked regulations and funding. Dix began working around the United States to bring reform, and in 1847, her report in Illinois was instrumental in the state’s decision to open its first mental hospital. (The first mental hospital was opened in Jacksonville in 1851, and the center was used up until 2012, though its focus had shifted toward the developmentally challenged.)

Portrait of a 5-year-old girl in 1928, last name Cappelleno, looking toward the camera, sitting in a bed in a room at Kankakee Hospital in Kankakee, Illinois. The hospital is pictured right in 1928. (Photo from the Chicago Daily News via the Chicago History Museum)

The growth that followed was exponential. By 1904, over 150,000 patients lived in mental hospitals in the United States, and that number grew rapidly. Many of these psychiatric hospitals were built just outside the city or at its edges. Some of these facilities were created with the best intentions, and well-regarded architects were brought in with the goal of creating serene spaces, often in the countryside. Many Cook County residents were transported to facilities outside city limits, like Kankakee Hospital or Manteno State Hospital, which were both about over 50 miles away from The Loop. Even Dunning, which is in Chicago proper, looked positively serene:

View of the Chicago State Hospital buildings as seen from across the farm, in the Dunning community area of Chicago, Illinois in 1908. This image was taken as part of a Chicago Railways Company Trolley Trip. (Photo via the Chicago History Museum)

View of a lagoon at the Chicago State Hospital, formerly known as Dunning Mental Institute, in the Dunning community area of Chicago, Illinois. This image was taken as part of a Chicago Railways Company Trolley Trip. (Photo via the Chicago History Museum)

But despite the efforts of mental health care advocates and activists like Dix, many mental hospitals were terrible places to live. Patients in mental hospitals were impoverished and tightly packed into these facilities. Chicago State Hospital, nicknamed Dunning for its location, is perhaps one of the most notorious in Illinois. Rife with corruption and packed with cloistered residents, Dunning lacked the resources to properly care for its residents. A 2013 WBEZ report notes, "Even under the best of conditions, doctors didn't have many effective treatments for people suffering from mental illness. The only drugs they had at their disposal were sedatives."

Inmates at the Chicago State Hospital, known as Dunning, walk outdoors on a snow-covered path on Dec 10, 1910. (Photo from the Chicago Daily News via the Chicago History Museum)

Women sit on a piece of furniture placed on the lawn near a building at the Dunning Mental Institute after a fire on April 13, 1915. (Photo from the Chicago Daily News via the Chicago History Museum)

Following the return of traumatized soldiers from WWII, the National Mental Health Act in 1946 called for the establishment of the National Institute of Mental Health, which was given a budget for the research and development of America's mental health care. Regulations became stricter. Psychiatric units were added to pre-existing hospitals, and the population of the overcrowded and under-managed mental health institutions fell. The abandonment of the practices was swift, leaving huge facilities open and gutted.

Today we're still wrestling with the best way to treat patients with mental illnesses. The patients who would be residing in places like Dunning in another era have been largely shuffled into other government institutions or abandoned completely. Lincoln Park Community cites the number of homeless individuals with mental illness at 26 percent. The Atlantic's article “America's Largest Mental Hospital Is a Jail,” explores Cook County Jail, where an estimated one-third of the prison population suffers from mental illness. Reporter Matt Ford writes:

One kid on the list had a tendency toward aggression, but officials emphasized that the overwhelming majority were "crimes of survival" such as retail theft (to find food or supplies) or breaking and entering (to find a place to sleep). For those with mental illness, charges of drug possession can often indicate attempts at self-medication.

C4—where Williamson works—is a third option. As a community of outpatient clinics, C4 provides for people with mental illness, especially those recovering patients who have recently left psychiatric care. C4 aims to offer "quality, comprehensive customer-oriented services tailored to the diversity of its consumers."

But Williamson notes the difficulty of their mission: "Mental health affects a person’s functioning across all levels...If I have a broken arm or I have diabetes, there are certain areas of my life that will suffer, but if I have schizophrenia or depression, every waking aspect of my life is impacted. You end up with a lot more barriers to treatment."

Williamson cites budgetary restraints as the largest obstacle for organizations like C4. "The needs of the severely and chronically ill are varied and multiple, especially since these illnesses are often not curable and often enduring — it's increasingly more difficult to manage the care of them within the confines of what is currently considered reimbursable."

The National Alliance of Mental Illness (NAMI), when examining the state mental health budgets for 2016, called their findings "troubling." Only 23 states increased their budgets, 12 were decreased, and the rest stayed the same—with the exception of Illinois and Pennsylvania, whose budgets were still unfinished when the report came out. In the meantime, practices like C4—who services a large number of patients on Medicaid—are treading water.

As Williamson explains, "You can't provide a service that you can't get reimbursed for, so the way that reimbursement occurs ends up shaping how these services can be provided instead of the other way around."

But when asked about the future of mental health care, Williamson laughs. "I'm an optimist," he says, "and I do believe we find ways to continually provide care." Williamson notes the advancements in medication, as well as the access and opportunity an increase in technology has provided. "The trick becomes how to mix and match and get the things that are likely to be effective to the people who would benefit from them."

"Illinois is just like any other place in its challenges, but I think it's also unique in the depth and the breadth," says Williamson. "You have to be able to function with a high level of uncertainty to be effective."

Hale Goetz is a 20-something Chicago suburbanite and D&D enthusiast. She writes about feminism, identity, and guilty pleasures. You can find more of her work here or follow her on Twitter.