The Ohio General Assembly passed a law to establish the Ohio Lunatic Asylum in 1835. The institution was located on East Broad Street in Columbus and opened in 1838. The facility was soon home to more than 100 patients. When asylums were opened in other parts of the state it became known as the Central Ohio Lunatic Asylum. The original building was destroyed by a fire in 1868 that claimed the lives of six patients. A large facility was rebuilt on West Broad Street. The name of the institution changed to the Columbus Hospital for the Insane and then changed again to the Columbus State Hospital in 1894. This facility housed thousands of patients through the decades. It was raised in the 1990s to make way for new state office buildings which share the space with the hospital cemeteries.
The Ohio Lunatic Asylum Records (1 file folder) contains a document from William M. Awl to Joseph Whiting stating that a patient, Mrs. Mary Barnes of Guernsey County, was discharged from the Ohio Lunatic Asylum on January 6, 1847.
The collection is open to the public and is available for viewing in the Medical Heritage Center. Materials do not circulate and must be used in the supervised reading room. Restrictions, including copyright, may exist and some materials may be too fragile to photocopy or digitize. The MHC charges for duplication services, which must be performed by staff.
[Identification of item], Ohio Lunatic Asylum Records, SPEC.202562.ASYLUM, Medical Heritage Center, Health Sciences Library, The Ohio State University.