Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum

A Short History

By: James Rose

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

Later known as the Weston State Hospital, the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum formerly functioned as a prominent psychiatric facility in northern West Virginia. Using the findings of Doctor Thomas Kirkbride and the wishes of Dorothea Dix as the foundation for the structure, the hospital was meant to hold a mere two-hundred and fifty patients upon its opening in 1864. However, by the time it closed in 1994, it was home to over two thousand patients. During the thirteen decades of its existence, officials sanctioned the use of a vast array of medical techniques to serve as treatment to the asylum’s residents, whether their condition was medical or physical. As those treatment styles changed over the allotment of time, so did the building itself as well as the opportunities it provided to the community of Weston.