Article written July 2026.
Columbus State Hospital, also known as the Ohio State Hospital for the Insane and Central Ohio Lunatic Asylum, was Columbus’s former psychiatric hospital. High Victorian Gothic in style and using the Kirkbride plan, it was supposedly the largest building in the world before the construction of the Pentagon. It has since been demolished, like many other landmarks in Columbus.
Columbus State Hospital was located at 1960 West Broad Street in the Hilltop neighborhood of Columbus, Ohio, which is Rhodes Park today. It is bordered by I-70 to the north and east, Broad Street and the Columbus Developmental Center to the south, and the ODOT and ODPS headquarters to the west.
History
Engraving of the original asylum building. (Wikimedia)
When Ohio was founded in 1803 and for the decades following, people with mental illnesses were either taken care of at home or imprisoned in local jails or the Ohio Penitentiary. However, following an 1835 medical conference, there was interest in building an asylum to care for mentally ill people. Columbus State Hospital was established as the Central Ohio Lunatic Asylum on March 5, 1835, by the state government. (Again, remember the euphemism treadmill-- “lunatic” was medical terminology of the time and became an insult later.) The earliest incarnation of the hospital was completed in November 1839 by architect Nathan B. Kelley in the Greek Revival style at a cost of $61,000. The columned exterior was Waverly marble, and it was built using convict labor. Its original location was on East Broad Street near the current Jefferson Avenue and I-71. The hospital also had three additions between 1843 and 1847.
Columbus State Hospital’s first superintendent was William Maclay Awl, who was a member of the Ohio General Assembly (Senate/House) and specialized in mental illnesses. Awl went on to found the Ohio State Medical Society and backed bills to establish the Ohio Institute for Feeble-Minded Youth and the Ohio Institution for the Deaf & Dumb.
Looking west at the 1877 Kirkbride hospital, circa 1900. (Library of Congress)
The 1839 asylum building was destroyed by a fire in November 1868, which began in a clothing storage room. The fire killed six female patients near the ignition point and left 308 others without care. In the interim, the remaining patients stayed at the Ohio Institution for the Deaf & Dumb and the surviving hospital building. Its East Broad Street site was sold in 1870, and the current site was purchased that year. The replacement Columbus State Hospital was built from 1870 to 1877, which was a High Victorian Gothic design by Cleveland architect Levi Scofield that employed the Kirkbride plan. However, the hospital’s original board of trustees was disbanded mid-construction and a new Board of Commissioners formed, which then appointed Thomas Tinsley as the building’s architect. When the new hospital opened, it was renamed the Columbus Hospital for the Insane. (Its present name was changed in 1894.)
Snippet of the 1899 Baist map, showing the Kirkbride plan of the hospital. (Columbus Metropolitan Library)
I’m going to elaborate a little more about Kirkbride hospitals in this article, since I was unable to see the Athens Lunatic Asylum while I lived in Ohio and will not get a chance to see another one until I visit Kankakee, Illinois eventually, which could be a year or two from now. Anyways, the Kirkbride plan was a system of designing mental hospitals created by Thomas Kirkbride in the mid-19th century. Kirkbride believed that natural light and ventilation were vital to the treatment of mental illnesses, and stipulated that buildings be designed with large windows and vast open grounds surrounding them. The first of these Kirkbride buildings was the Greek Revival New Jersey State Lunatic Asylum, which was completed in 1848. Many were built across the United States through the early 20th century, though Kirkbride’s theories were discredited by that point, and the hospitals were very expensive to maintain. About 73 Kirkbride hospitals were built, and 33 still stand in their original form.
Columbus State Hospital’s Kirkbride plan is evident through its airplane-like form, with three wings on each side of the center of the building. This layout was intended to have each wing as a separate ward, and the corridors would be open to light and air with their staggered layout. Each patient had an individual room, and the hospital was originally designed to hold 800 patients. The grounds surrounding the hospital are also essential to the design, as Kirkbride believed that landscaping would calm and enlighten the patients (environmental determinism).
Aerial view of the hospital. (Wikimedia)
Despite its original capacity of 800 patients, Columbus State Hospital housed 1,350 patients by 1900, and 2,932 by 1935. Of course, additions were made to the original building, but it was still rather overcrowded. These additions followed the later “cottage plan” and were more spread out. After the Victorian treatments that were barbaric by today’s standards, later care wasn’t much better. Over 100 patients were lobotomized in the 1950s, and over 14,000 electroconvulsive therapies occurred in just one year. However, the asylum’s legacy is not entirely tainted, as lithium (a medication used to treat bipolar disorder even today) was first used at Columbus State Hospital.
c. 1980 photo of the facade. Note the missing cupola. (Columbus Metropolitan Library)
Columbus State Hospital closed in the 1980s, part of the ongoing trend of deinstitutionalization in the United States. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1986 amidst efforts to save the building, but it was demolished by (who else but) S. G. Loewendick & Sons between 1991 and 1996. A portion of the grounds is now Rhodes Park, while the asylum’s location is roughly where the ODOT and ODPS buildings are today. The only remnants of Columbus State Hospital visible today are its cemeteries.
Sources:
Architecture: Columbus by Robert Samuelson
https://catalog.archives.gov/id/71988551
https://ohiomemory.ohiohistory.org/archives/4060
https://library.osu.edu/site/mhcb/2011/09/26/ohio-state-hospital/
https://www.loc.gov/item/2016794829/
https://digital-collections.columbuslibrary.org/digital/collection/columbusmaps/id/55
https://www.kirkbridebuildings.com/about/history.html
https://www.kirkbridebuildings.com/buildings/columbus/
https://digital-collections.columbuslibrary.org/digital/collection/memory/id/79284/rec/69