Fergus Falls Regional Treatment Center

The Fergus Falls State Hospital opened on July twenty-ninth, eighteen ninety, as the third state psychiatric hospital in Minnesota. It was designed by architect Warren Dunnell according to the Kirkbride plan, the nineteenth-century approach developed by Philadelphia physician Thomas Kirkbride, who believed that architecture itself could heal the mind. Kirkbride buildings were built with long wings arranged in a bat-wing pattern, filled with light and air, and surrounded by farmland where patients worked.

The Fergus Falls complex is one of the last Kirkbride structures built in the United States. The hospital operated for over a century, changing its name to the Regional Treatment Center in nineteen eighty-five to reflect a broader mission. It closed in two thousand and five.

The main building was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in nineteen eighty-six, and the city of Fergus Falls now owns the land.