Agnews Insane Asylum

About this property

Agnews Developmental Center was a state institution located on two campuses in the U.S. state of California; one in Santa Clara and one in San Jose. Founded in 1885 as a psychiatric facility for the mentally ill, it operated for over a century before closing in stages between 1998 and 2011. Over time, its mission expanded to include people with developmental disabilities, which became its sole focus after psychiatric programs were discontinued in 1972 following deinstitutionalization. In 1885, the center, originally the Great Asylum for the Insane, was established for the care of the mentally ill. The building cost $750,000. The main red brick structure, was on land near Agnew's Village, which later became part of Santa Clara. The building was modeled on the Kirkbride Plan and designed by the 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 two train stations designated for Agnews, at the west end of Palm Drive across Lafayette Street. The train station closest to Palm Drive survived until vandalism and fire precipitated its demolition in the mid-1990s while the other one remains standing to date, now as a model railroad showroom. The psychiatrist Frederick W. Hatch was Superintendent of Agnews Insane Asylum from the fall of 1889 until 1897. He later served as the General Superintendent of State Hospitals in California for some 20 years. The 1906 San Francisco earthquake destroyed the facility and nearby buildings. 117 patients and staff were killed and buried in mass graves on the site. Agnews 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 many construction trade "shops", a farm which raised pigs and vegetable crops, a steam generating power plant for heat, and a fire department. In 1926, the center was expanded to include a second campus about 2 miles (3 km) to the east on Zanker road in San Jose (37°24′32″N 121°55′53″W). A hospital was later built for that campus in the early 1960s. Individuals with developmental disabilities were first admitted to a special rehabilitation program in 1965. Programs for the mentally ill were discontinued in 1971 following deinstitutionalization, and the last mentally ill patient left Agnews in June of the following year. After deinstitutionalization, both campuses were used for the care and treatment of people with developmental disabilities. In 1985, the campuses were officially renamed Agnews Developmental Center. Activity of the west campus shifted to the east campus in 1995 as the former campus was scheduled to close. In 1996, the west campus was sold and later redeveloped by Sun Microsystems. The east campus remained operational until it was sold and closed in 2011.

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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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