Paint-Chipped Chair in a Sunlit Corner at Fergus Falls Kirkbride

The Fergus Falls Regional Treatment Center, known as the Kirkbride Building, opened in 1890 as the Fergus Falls State Hospital, a state-run facility for the treatment of mental illness. It was designed under the Kirkbride Plan, a 19th-century model of asylum architecture developed by psychiatrist Thomas Story Kirkbride that emphasized natural light, ventilation, and staggered wings to house patients. The hospital operated for over a century before closing in the early 2000s, and the building has since sat largely vacant. Furnishings from its decades of institutional use, including patient seating and radiators original to the building's heating system, remain scattered throughout the structure.