About

Founded as the Pennsylvania State Lunatic Hospital, this was the first state hospital for the mentally ill established in Pennsylvania, thanks to the lobbying of well-known reformer Dorothea Dix. The hospital admitted its first patients in 1851. The campus showcases how approaches to care for the insane transitioned from the mid-nineteenth to early twentieth century. It originated under the large, single-building Kirkbride Plan, but at the turn of the century, administrators adopted the Cottage Plan, which relied on dispersed, smaller buildings in pursuit of an allegedly more “home-like” atmosphere. Colloquially referred to as the “City on the Hill,” Harrisburg State Hospital’s (this name was adopted in 1921) population peaked in the mid-twentieth century at more than 2500 people. As new medications and activism enabled deinstitutionalization, the hospital’s population gradually shrank until it finally closed in 2006. The campus remains state property. Efforts are underway to redevelop the site into laboratories shared among multiple state departments, including forensics, public health, and environmental quality. As of fall 2024, those plans aimed to restore four historic buildings while demolishing the rest.

Although much of the campus is included in a National Historic District on the National Register of Historic Places, the cemetery does not appear to fall within the district’s boundaries. Ambiguity surrounds burial practices and sites on the Harrisburg State Hospital’s campus. In its first four years of operation, the Hospital buried unclaimed deceased patients in the city cemetery. After that, at least two sites on the campus operated as burial places, one from 1857-1927 and another from 1927 onward. Some bodies were likely relocated from the first to the second; it is unknown how many additional people, if any, were buried in the latter cemetery. A single dedication stone, erected in 1987, marks this fenced-in cemetery.

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