Dorothea Dix Hospital (Dix Park)

The North Carolina State Hospital — later Dorothea Dix Hospital — opened in Raleigh in 1856, the product of years of advocacy by Dorothea Lynde Dix, the Massachusetts reformer who campaigned across the United States for state-funded psychiatric care. The original building, designed by architect Alexander Jackson Davis in Italianate style, rose on a hilltop south of downtown Raleigh on a parcel the legislature set aside for the purpose. The hospital was one of a generation of state asylums built in the mid-nineteenth century on the therapeutic premise that fresh air, productive labor, and humane surroundings would aid in mental recovery.

Through the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the campus grew steadily. New ward buildings, staff housing, service structures, and a working farm expanded the institution to more than 300 acres and 282 buildings at its maximum development. The patient population peaked in the mid-twentieth century. By that time the original therapeutic idealism had eroded under the weight of overcrowding and chronic underfunding — a pattern common to state psychiatric institutions nationally.

The patient cemetery on the grounds holds approximately 900 burials. Many graves are marked only with numbered markers, the numbered identification system reflecting decades of practice in which patients who died without family to claim their remains were buried on site with minimal documentation. The last interment in the cemetery was recorded in 1970.

The hospital closed in 2012 as the state moved the remaining patients to other facilities. The North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services transferred the land to the City of Raleigh, which began converting the campus into Dix Park — a large public green space and eventual cultural and recreational destination. The NPS has documented the site's significance; the original 1856 main building remains a landmark in the landscape.