Iowa Insane Hospital, U.S. Route 218, Mount Pleasant, Henry County, IA

Significance: The Iowa Insane Hospital was an example of a state-owned mental hospital designed in a decade when the first great advances in the humane care and treatment of the insane had been made by the medical profession in the United States. The functional planning of the original building reflects these advances and is the result of considerable interaction among the architect, the medical consultants all from Eastern states and the Commissioners representing the state. On the other hand, the construction of the original building reflected the technological inadequacies of the building industry in a state which had entered the Union only nine years earlier and in a locality in that state which had been opened to settlement only thirteen years before admission. Was the first mental hospital in the state of Iowa.
Survey number: HABS IA-58