Hallway mural corridor with mosaic tile floor, Fergus Falls Kirkbride Building

Abandoned institutional hallway with handwritten motivational quotes on white walls and patterned tile floor.
Abandoned institutional hallway with handwritten motivational quotes on white walls and patterned tile floor.

The Fergus Falls Kirkbride Building, part of the former Fergus Falls Regional Treatment Center, was designed by architect Warren B. Dunnell and opened in 1890 under the Kirkbride Plan, a 19th-century model for asylum architecture that emphasized natural light, ventilation, and staggered wings for patient wards. The hospital operated under several names over the following century, including the Fergus Falls State Hospital, before the state discontinued mental health services on the campus in the 1990s. Later programs, including chemical dependency treatment through the 2000s, used sections of the building, and murals and hand-painted messages from those later occupants remain on many interior walls. The complex was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2005. Much of the building has stood vacant since 2008, and its future has been the subject of ongoing local redevelopment debate.

Photo taken in June 2014.

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