Fort Wayne State Developmental Center
Also known as the Indiana School for Feeble Minded Youth. Indiana’s second oldest mental health facility opened in 1879 at Knightstown. It was relocated to Fort Wayne in 1890. The first patient admitted that year was an eleven year old boy from Ossian, Wells County. It served mentally retarded children from throughout Indiana until 1939, when its service area was reduced to the northern half of the state. Its mission was expanded to include patients of all ages with other developmental disabilities. Before closure in 2007 the facility had admitted 12,162 patients. The center’s admission registers, card index, and a nearly complete set of medical records on microfilm, are at the Indiana State Archives.
Copied from Other Indiana Hospitals for the Mentally Ill and Developmentally Disabled at the Indiana Archives. See also Fort Wayne State Hospital & Training Center aka Indiana School for Feeble Minded Youth Cemetery. The name change was discussed around the 1:22 minute mark and closed April 18, 2007 (1:46 minute mark) when the last resident left during Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels administration, 2005 to 2013, from the 1:43 minute mark of The Forgotten PBS documentary.
Fort Wayne Developmental Center on Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia.
See also Allen County Children's Home, Allen County Orphan Home, Allen County Poor Farm, Fort Wayne Children's Home, and St. Vincent Villa Catholic Orphanage.
February 7, 2023 post by Indiana Archives and Records Administration on Facebook:
Please welcome our first ever shared intern!
Sam is working on an extensive project to get the physical and digital records of the Fort Wayne State Developmental Center building sites converted and transferred to the Archives.
We are excited to have her on board!