Photo courtesy of Don Cook via Findagrave.com About The State Institution for the Feeble-Minded of Western Pennsylvania was designed by Frederick John Osterling. The first 153 residents arrived all at once in 1897, transferred from a private institution, the Pennsylvania Training School for Feeble-Minded Children at Elwyn. At its peak in the 1950s, the institution…

Image courtesy of Findagrave.com About The Eastern Pennsylvania State Institution for the Feeble-Minded and Epileptic, later known as the Pennhurst State School and Hospital, admitted its first resident in 1908. Its population grew rapidly and overcrowding was constant. It reached its peak population of over 3500 residents in the mid-1950s. Although the Pennhurst cemetery is…

About Woodville State Hospital began in the mid-nineteenth century as the Allegheny County Home, an institution that held the county’s poorest residents. By the early twentieth century, it included a department for those deemed insane as well as a sanitarium for people diagnosed with tuberculosis. In 1941, the state took control of the mental healthcare…