Portal:Featured Article Of The Week
Featured Article Of The Week
Mayview State Hospital
In 1804, a building was completed in the newly incorporated City of Pittsburgh. The new building was the city's first "poor house"; it held a population of 30. In 1818, an increase in the size of the indigent population resulted in the construction of the Allegheny City Almshouse. By 1846, with the continued increase in patients, the city was scouting sites for yet another new almshouse. Roughly 150 acres were acquired along the banks of the Monongahela River at Homestead, in Mifflin township, and a three-story brick building was built to hold 300 patients. The City Poor Farm at Homestead opened in 1852, and by 1879, a separate building was erected for the treatment of the insane. With a burgeoning population and a conviction that rural settings were healthier, especially for tuberculosis patients, the city made plans to move the hospital again; this time, it would be located well outside the city boundaries. Land along the Monongahela was valuable, and the city sold its almshouse acreage to the Carnegie Steel Company for $450,000. Click here for more...
