“Anoka State Mental Hospital” – It’s been abandoned since 1999. Just saying the name evokes memories of every single scary movie you’ve watched in recent history, such as those Friday the 13th movies we used to watch as kids. However, like many other abandoned places in the Twin Cities of Minnesota, it seems to be coming back to life.
Here’s the link to the photo album on Facebook
Some of the buildings are still in rough shape, and those are easy to pick out by the plywood in all the windows. Others are in the process of being renovated, and a couple are used now as veterans’ homes. The first thing that jumped out at me was how BIG the campus is. Lots of large brick buildings got built in the shape of a half-circle. It’s enormous!
The brick buildings have every right to look like they’ve been through a lot: they have. A minnpost.com article says the fourth Minnesota state hospital for the insane opened in 1900. The place was quite different from the other three institutions; the Anoka State Mental Hospital was the first to be built in Minnesota according to the cottage plan. The goal was to reduce the institutional feel of the place for its chronic patients.
They say overcrowding was a big problem at Minnesota’s mental health institutions operating in Rochester, Fergus Falls, and St. Peter. To help alleviate the overcrowding problems, the planning commission chose 650 acres right near the scenic Rum River in Anoka for a fourth site.
Building the hospital got started in June of 1899, and the first 100 patients (all men) were transferred to the facility on March 14, 1900. The facility began to expand in 1905, adding several cottages, as well as farm and service buildings. By 1917, ten cottages, an auditorium, and a new administration formed in a semicircle at the completed facility.
However, like many mental institutions across the country, history wasn’t always a good thing for the facility. A dramatic series of articles exposed some horrible conditions at the hospital in the mid-1900s. State officials became determined to do something about the problem.
The atlasobscura.com website says, on Halloween night in 1949, they held a bonfire on the grounds of the Anoka State Mental Hospital. It must have been a big fire as around 359 straitjackets, 196 cuffs, and 91 straps, all different forms of restraints used on the patients, were destroyed. Governor Luther Youngdahl and other officials used the event to show the world that the facility was moving toward more humane forms of treatment.
Conditions did improve for the patients, thanks to the development of new drugs and institutional reforms. Some unfortunate incidents that compromised community safety around the hospital took place here and there over the next several decades. The Anoka State Mental Hospital closed in 1999, and the patients got moved to a nearby facility.
