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AUDIT ROW #293 · THE BOUNDARY STATED: THE ASYLUM'S HISTORY IS THE COUNTY RECORD'S
The checklist opens this section with the county asylum, and the banked set already rules the boundary: the asylum's history belongs to the county record, and this article prints the frame at county size and no more. The county's care of its insane ran through its poor farm: the first county infirmary was established in 1846 at "White Hall" on the Michigan Road; a second home followed in 1857 at Ironwood and Jefferson; the county bought the Brown farm in 1905 for $20,962.50 and built the house this section's fourth article follows — the new building (Freyermuth & Maurer, architects; Keogan Construction, $72,549.69) opened with the patients transferred on April 4, 1907, to 3016 Portage Avenue, South Bend, on 113.8 acres, with a capacity the city's landmark record gives as 285, its population including the era's catch-all class of the "feebleminded" [City of South Bend landmark report; South Bend Tribune, 2023]. The insane of Lincoln Township were the county's charges under that system — that sentence is the whole of Walkerton's claim on the asylum, and it is also the whole truth of the matter: care for this town's mentally ill was a county function, sited in the county seat, from the start. The article closes mixed at exactly that strength: the frame dug, the institution's whole course reserved to the county record where Health & Care assigns it.
Principal sources: City of South Bend Historic Preservation Commission staff report, St.