Agnews Insane Asylum - Murder Mystery

Agnews Developmental Center were two psychiatric and medical care facilities, located in Santa Clara, California and San Jose, California respectively.

History

[edit]

In 1885, the center, originally known as "The Great Asylum for the Insane",[1] was established as a facility for the care of the mentally ill. The building finished construction at a cost of $750,000. The main structure, a red brick edifice, was located on land near Agnew's Village, which later became part of Santa Clara. The building was modeled after the Kirkbride Plan[2] and designed by architect Theodore Lenzen. By the early twentieth century, Agnews boasted the largest institutional population in the South San Francisco Bay area, and was served by its own train station which stood at the west end of Palm Drive across Lafayette Street. The train station remained standing until vandalism and fire precipitated its demolition in the mid-1990s.

The 1906 San Francisco earthquake caused the destruction of the facility and nearby buildings. 117 patients and staff were killed and buried in mass graves on the site. Agnews then became infamous as the site of the Santa Clara Valley's greatest loss of life resulting from the quake. The Daily Palo Alto reported: "The position of the people in Agnews is critical; a number of insane persons having escaped from the demolished asylum, are running at random about the country."

Following this disaster, Agnews was rebuilt in the Mediterranean Revival architecture styles of Mission Revival—Spanish Colonial Revival, in a layout resembling a college campus of two-story buildings. It re-opened circa 1911 as Agnews State Mental Hospital. The facility was a small self-contained town, including a multitude of construction trade "shops", a farm which raised pigs and vegetable crops, a steam generating power plant for heating the buildings by steam, and even a fire department.

In 1926, the center was expanded to include a second campus about 2 miles (3 km) to the east in San Jose (37°24′32″N 121°55′53″W). A hospital was later built for the campus. Individuals with developmental disabilities were first admitted to a special rehabilitation program in 1965.

Programs for the mentally ill were discontinued in 1972 following deinstitutionalisation. The west campus would close 26 years later in 1998. Following the deinstitutionalisation of the east campus, the campus would be used for the care and treatment of people with developmental disabilities until the property was sold and closed in 2011.[3]