Hexagonal-Tile Corridor Beneath an Exit Sign at Fergus Falls Kirkbride

The Fergus Falls Kirkbride Building was built between 1888 and 1902 as the Fergus Falls State Hospital, designed by architect Warren B. Dunnell in the Richardsonian Romanesque style. It followed the Kirkbride Plan, a 19th-century model for asylum design that called for staggered wings extending from a central administration block to maximize light and ventilation in patient wards. The complex operated as a state hospital and later as the Fergus Falls Regional Treatment Center until its closure in 2005. Its corridors, like this one, connected patient rooms and wards along the building's linear wing layout, a hallmark of Kirkbride-plan institutions built across the United States in the late 1800s.

Taken June 2014