Our Pick
Posted on @rawstates
The Elgin asylum, which held 7,700 patients at its peak
1872
Elgin, Illinois
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It opened in 1872 as the Northern Illinois Hospital and Asylum for the Insane and grew to more than 1,100 acres, a good part of it a farm worked by the patients themselves. By the middle 1950s about 7,700 people were held there. What it was for kept changing with state policy, taking in tuberculosis cases and federally funded veterans at different points. Most of the older buildings stood empty for years and were demolished between 1993 and 2008.
That was 1 of the hidden places.
Location: historic site
This place has its own thread on r/rawstates
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