1898

Cornerstone

The Indiana School for Feeble Minded Youth (ISFMY) began as an asylum for orphans near Indianapolis. By 1887, a facility was constructed on a large Fort Wayne property located around what is currently State Street and Kentucky Ave to house "feeble-minded" children.

The buildings were designed by the firm Wing and Mahurin, who also designed the building you are standing in today. Structures sprawled across the property over the ensuing years. By the 1920s the ISFMY housed over fifteen-hundred patients and farmed hundreds of acres surrounding the property. Young men were provided with vocational training in fields such as upholstery, farming, and carpentry, and were tasked with manufacturing items such as shoes, bricks, or mattresses. Young women were provided similar training in domestic arts such as weaving, laundry, cooking, and canning.

In 1931, the ISFMY became the Fort Wayne State Hospital. This was not only more respectful, but an acknowledgement that residents were patients who required specialized therapy and treatment. In the mid-1950s the facility was moved to Parker Place Farm near U. S. 37. In 1965, the institution was renamed the Fort Wayne Hospital and Training Center, and by the late 1970s all services were moved to this location. The name of institution changed to the Fort Wayne Developmental Center in the 1980s.

Facilities which permanently housed people with mental illness or cognitive disability began to be phased out in favor of group homes and supervised independent living. Since the ADA was passed in 1990, people with these disabilities have lived more independent and accommodating lives that reflect the equality intended in the passage of the bill. The Fort Wayne Developmental Center permanently closed in 2007, and the original campus was demolished to construct North Side Park in 1983.