Sloped Attic Storage Room with Coat Hooks at Fergus Falls Kirkbride

The Fergus Falls Kirkbride Building opened in 1890 as the main structure of the Fergus Falls State Hospital, an institution built to house and treat patients with mental illness. Architect Warren B. Dunnell designed it according to the Kirkbride Plan, a 19th-century model developed by psychiatrist Thomas Story Kirkbride that arranged wards in a stepped, linear layout to give patients access to natural light and ventilation. Upper-level rooms in the building's wings were used for staff quarters and storage rather than patient care, which took place mainly on the lower floors. The hospital operated for over a century before closing in the 1990s, and the building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2006.