Central Lunatic Asylum

SA-123

Howard's Grove was a 19th-century recreational retreat near Richmond before becoming a Confederate hospital in 1862. After the Civil War, the Freedmen’s Bureau operated a hospital here for African Americans suffering from mental disorders, ill health, or homelessness. In Dec. 1869 the federal government transferred the facility to the state as an asylum exclusively for the “colored insane,” making it the nation’s first stand-alone mental hospital for black patients. Organized as a state institution in 1870, the Central Lunatic Asylum moved to Dinwiddie County in 1885, was renamed Central State Hospital in 1894, and was desegregated in 1967.

Department of Historic Resources, 2020

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References/Bibliographic Citation:

General Orders No. 136, 17 Dec. 1869, General Orders and Circulars, Headquarters First Military District, 1869. “An Act to Establish the Central Lunatic Asylum,” Acts of the General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Virginia, 7 June 1870. Report of the Board of Directors & Medical Superintendent of the Central Lunatic Asylum, 1870, 1872-1873. Deed, City of Petersburg to Central Lunatic Asylum, 8 Aug. 1882, Dinwiddie County Court. H. M. Hurd & W. F. Drewry, eds., The Institutional Care of the Insane in the United States and Canada (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1916.) Records of Howard’s Grove Hospital, www.civilwarrichmond.com Richmond Dispatch, 12 Jan. 1863.