During that period it underwent several changes of name, becoming first the Tennessee Hospital for the Insane, then, upon incorporation with the developing system of state mental hospitals, Central Hospital for the Insane, and finally Middle Tennessee Mental Health Institute. “An Asylum on Fire.” 3-15-1891, p. 1. In 1845 a book titled A Secret Worth Knowing, purportedly written by an asylum patient named Green Grimes, appeared praising the asylum’s success. This building, located on Murfreesboro Pike to the southeast of Nashville, remained the home of the asylum from 1851 to 1995. The Middle Tennessee Mental Health Institute, originally known as the Tennessee Hospital for the Insane and later as the Central State Hospital for the Insane, was a psychiatric hospital … This building remained the home of the asylum from 1851 to 1995. Three tours available. The latter problem was compounded by an early underestimation of the costs of caring for paupers in the asylum. A separate facility for the criminally insane opened on grounds of Central State Hospital in 1931. http://tennesseeencyclopedia.net/entries/tennessee-lunatic-asylum/. This tour involves storytelling that might be frightening to a child. All Rights Reserved. During that period it underwent several changes of name, becoming first the Tennessee Hospital for the Insane, then, upon incorporation with the developing system of state mental hospitals, Central Hospital for the Insane, and finally Middle Tennessee Mental Health Institute. “Insane Asylum Burned.” 3-14-1891, p. 1. American Journal of Insanity: “The Fire at the Nashville Hospital. The book was followed the next year by a sequel, Lily of the West. The institution is anchored by the main administration building, a Gothic Revival landmark designed in the mid-1880s on the Kirkbride Plan. The Tennessee General Assembly established the asylum in 1832, and it opened its doors to patients in 1840. Haunted Downtown Nashville Tour. Online Edition © 2002 ~ 2018, The University of Tennessee Press, Knoxville, Tennessee. The asylum officially opened on November 22, 1889. This entry was posted in 1900s newspapers, Medical History and tagged description of new insane asylum, East Tennessee Insane Asylum, Knoxville Daily Journal, local pride in insane asylums, Nashville Asylum for the Insane, value of insane asylum to local economy on December 7, 2014 by Carla Joinson. This site is dedicated to the TNA Asylum Days of Professional Wrestling in Nashville, Tennessee. For most years during the antebellum era, asylum appropriations far exceeded those for the state penitentiary, the other public institution founded during this era of reform, and in fact the asylum budget often surpassed that of the entire executive payroll. The asylum is situated in the eastern part of the state, and show eerie images, abandoned wheelchairs, … It could house 250 patients, each with their own comfortable room. 1848 Legislature appropriated $40,000 for … History Tennessee’s first facility for the mentally ill, Tennessee Lunatic Asylum, opened in 1840 Nashville as the eleventh institution for mentally ill in United States. The asylum would be the last in Tennessee to be built also the least funded. The first insane patients were admitted to the Racine county poorhouse in 1855. Its original quarters, at the corner of the present Twelfth Avenue South and Division Street in Nashville, proved woefully inadequate. The Western Mental Health Institute is a historic insane asylum located in the small town of Bolivar, about sixty miles east of Memphis.