- [Voiceover] The following program is a production of Pioneer Public Television.

This program on Pioneer Public Television is funded by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund.

With money from the vote of the people of Minnesota on November 4th, 2008.

Additional support provided by Mark and Margaret Yackel-Juleen, in honor of Shalom Hill Farm, a non-profit, rural education retreat center in a beautiful prairie setting near Windham in southwestern Minnesota, shalomhillfarm.org.

The Arrowwood Resort & Conference Center, your ideal choice for Minnesota resorts offering luxury townhomes, 18 holes of golf, Darling Reflections Spa, Big Splash Waterpark, and much more.

Alexandria Minnesota, a relaxing vacation or great location for an event.

Explorealex.com, easy to get to, hard to leave.

(soft instrumental music) - Welcome to Postcards, I'm Dana Johnson.

State hospitals in Minnesota were beautifully-designed structures that slowly faded as time went on, and state budgets tightened.

With these empty structures left standing, there has been public discussion about the fate of these majestic buildings.

Today we learn about the preservation efforts of two former state hospitals in Minnesota.

First we visit the historic Willmar State Hospital, and see its transformation into a productive business community, the MinnWest Technology Campus, let's take a look.

(soft instrumental music) - We know that Clarence Johnson Senior was the architect for the facility back in 1910.

The facility opened on December 26th of 1912, the day after Christmas.

Our history says that 33 men and four women came to the facility, and it was originally built to work with alcoholics and inebriates and so on, was its very first purpose.

In its day it was just a state hospital, they were self-sufficient, there was actually, they had their own farm, they farmed their own farmland.

They did their own canning, had a butcher shop, had their own water, so they were really a self-sufficient community by themselves, and they used the basically the patients for the labor, and that type stuff.

- The annex is a building that was originally built in 1912, and it housed actually the superintendent of the state hospital back then, and his family lived there.

At one point it also housed nursing, the nursing staff.

And doctors that worked on campus, so it went through a lot of transition through the years.

You will see some of the original structures are still in place, like the marble pillars on the porches, and things like that, so it's a very old building, it was one of the originals, and it went through a lot of transition through the years, 100 years almost, and that is where we'll see a lot of the activity that happened through those times.

- Basically we had two private companies here in Willmar that were housed on the west side of town, basically in pole barns, and they were growing technology, engineering, and they needed new space.

And at that time, the state had put this facility up for sale.

And they looked at it, and they were really struggling with finding qualified engineers, the high-tech type people, it was hard to bring them to Willmar with no other technology companies for them to work and so on.

- Well in 2004 we, Nova-Tech Engineering was looking for... Facilities to grow into.

We were at the time, basically working in a... Basically a machine shed, so it was a, a pole barn that was modified to have our business in it.

So we were looking for the future of what is it going to take for us to have the right type of facilities for us to build our business in.

And right at that same time, the area chamber, EBC, they were all looking for how they would reuse the, what is presently the MinnWest Technology Campus, at the time it was called the Willmar Regional Treatment Center.

- [Steve] So they bought this with the hopes of starting a technology campus, business park, so you could have all kinds of technology next door to one another.

Of course, many of the buildings are on the historic register, and so anything on the exterior of the buildings we need to go through the Historic Society.

And when we initially started, there were some challenges there, in that we had needs, and they had requirements.

So we really had to work and negotiate out things such as the landscaping or even vents that you would put on outside of buildings so, in the beginning it was very challenging for us to kind of come together.

- Through the process, we managed to come to an agreement of being able to leave the external of the buildings very much like they've been, maintain them as they were designed and built, and still be able to do what we need to do on the insides of the buildings so that they can become facilities that work for technology-based companies.

- [Joanna] As far as the outside structure of each of the cottages that we have out here, we do have to follow the historic guidelines.

We did make an agreement with how we are going to even handle the windows, we could not rebuild the windows, we actually came up with a system where we just put a storm window on the outside so that we did not cover up the structure and the look of the original windows.

They also look at the roof, and a lot of the cottages have clay roofs, and we do have a lot of clay tiles that we have purchased so that we can replace and repair.

And then, we have added one building since then, and we did work with the Historic Register on the look of that building.

Initially, we moved very fast.

From the time that we purchased the campus, in January of 2006, by June of 2006, we moved into our first facility, which means we totally gutted and rebuilt a building.

When we say gutted, we took everything out of these buildings, it has new heating, new electrical, new plumbing, new insulation, all put into it, data, so that we can connect to the network and, so all of that was done in about a five, five and a half month period.

One of the major things that we had to accomplish in that time period was to get off of the central boiler system.

This campus has a tunnel system that has about a mile of tunnels, and in the tunnels was all of the piping to heat each and every building.

- The buildings are unique, they're old, I mean, they backdate early 1900s.

One reason I like to be here for these buildings is because every one has different characters to it.

The structures are different.

There's different history by each building.

It's just, the building itself tells a different story.

So when you go in there to gut out the building, and you bring it back to life, it's actually a pretty nice thing.

- I think the reason that we really wanted to use the campus is the infrastructure was all in place.

Infrastructure was hugely expensive.

I do know that yes, it would have been cheaper to tear them down, because we could have built from the ground up much cheaper.

But here again, we really liked the historic, the campus-type atmosphere, and we thought that would really ring true to bring, to attract the talented people we need here.

- [Steve] When you look at what it means to the community, and what it means to even our employees, the places that we have to work here.

Are... Like none other, they are so unique, and awesome, and when you look at the campus itself, it's such a beautiful place to work.

- Some of the comments I get when I bring clients out here, are just the grounds itself, people like to come out here and they see it, then even in the room we're sitting, which is the historic fireplace room, they just kinda come in and kinda turn their heads and look and just say that this is very unique and nice, and I think it really impresses potential clients and partners that I bring out here.

- [Joanna] We're bringing back to life these awesome structures that could have potentially gone away.

And so, I think that people are seeing the significance of it, and wanting to be a part of it.

- When we have refurbished these facilities, are awesome facilities for a company to be a part of.

Because they have the uniqueness of very old, and the modernness on the inside of what it takes for a technology company to be able to grow and thrive.

So I would say that that's probably what makes it so special.

- [Curt] I think it is unique, and I think it's something that's special to this part of the region, and it's something for every community to look at, and I really enjoy, to be honest with you, coming to work today because of the environment that I'm working in.

- I'm sure it would have been easier to knock down the buildings, but... To keep these old buildings alive, it means a lot more.

Especially to this community.

- Just this year we went over 50% of our revenue, comes from outside of the country.

And when you look at that from an economic perspective, all of that financially comes right here to Willmar Minnesota.

And the value of that to the community, we are really proud of being able to provide work for the number of employees that we have, and being able to be a part of helping this community to grow and thrive.

- Now we tour an architectural masterpiece, the Kirkbride Building in Fergus Falls, where the Friends of the Kirkbride are fighting to keep it standing.

- [Laurie] Back in the 1800s the first state hospital was built in St. Peter, second one in Rochester, and then they realized there was a need for one in the northern part of the state, and Fergus Falls had everything that the state was looking for as a site.

So Fergus Falls was chosen, and they began building it in 1888, and it continued for 12 years.

The final section of the main building was completed in 1899, the tower building itself was built in 1895, but wasn't actually completed until 1906.

- The Fergus Falls State Hospital is called the Kirkbride because it is based on the concepts, the design plan, of Thomas Kirkbride.

And Thomas Kirkbride was a mid-19th-century physician, who was a real pioneer in the field of mental health.

And he was the superintendent for the Pennsylvania State Hospital for the Insane.

And he believed in a much more humane treatment of mentally-ill patients.

before that, mentally-ill patients were almost housed in basically prisons or shackled, their treatment was very poor.

He believed in treating them like human beings.

So he called his concept, his plan for housing mentally-ill patients, was to have a central-administration building.

Which would house offices for doctors and support staff.

And then to have patient wings.

With setbacks for maximum light, smaller rooms, more privacy, he also believed that a mental-health facility should have adequate acreage for farming, for gardening, for outdoor activities.

(soft instrumental music) - Actually there were 72 Kirkbrides built throughout the United States.

There is about 36 of them left.

Ours was the last Kirkbride that was built, and what is one of the unique things about our Kirkbride is that it's on a solid foundation.

They said that the only larger foundation in the United States, happens to be the Pentagon.

- You can imagine how many people this place served for well over 100 years, many many patients and it was a huge part of the economy of Fergus Falls.

The building was built to house 1,000 patients, and in March of 1937, they had 2,078 patients.

Badly overcrowded, they had patient beds in the hallways, and anywhere they could find a spot.

- [Laurie] Obviously the features of this campus are the main tower, it's gorgeous.

- [Maxine] And the beautiful tile floor has a border around it.

Every area, large, small, curved, whatever, has that border around it, and that is unique.

People ask us all the time, were those tiles laid individually, or did they come on sheets?

And we say we believe they must have come on sheets, or we would have run into a couple of people on their knees still laying tile!

(laughs) - [Laurie] The parquet floor that is in the gymnasium, the only other parquet floor of its type is with the Boston Celtics and so that's notable.

The building is stepped back, it's bat-shaped with wings.

And there were three types of Kirkbride designs, and ours was the third type of design, where it was stepped back with little half-curved hallways.

Of course the grounds are fabulous.

Professor Cleveland was the architect, a landscape architect that designed the grounds, and...

The grounds encompassed a thousand acres at one point.

(soft music) - It is an architectural masterpiece.

And there aren't many buildings like this around anymore.

It is a historic treasure right here in Fergus Falls.

We have something nobody else has.

And people come from all over to take our tour, and see what we have.

We just had our 6000th visitor on our tour, and they come from, I think we're up to about 40 states, and six different countries.

This is a destination, people want to see this beautiful building.

This is the main entrance area of the main tower building.

Administration offices, the superintendent's office, other doctors offices, a large conference room, and the receptionists and secretaries.

There are beautiful fireplaces in this area, in the reception room and in other offices.

And the beautiful grand staircase.

We are in the east detached section of the Kirkbride Building, this was the last section to be completed by the end of 1899.

It is a beautiful part of the building where very little has changed since it was built.

The only thing that has changed in this area is some surface wiring and the windows, the original wood-frame windows have been replaced with glass block.

This is the basement of the main Kirkbride building.

Used to be able to walk through here, now they have blocked off that wall, but there are still signs on the wall here pointing that says "walkers", but you can't get very far anymore.

Here are the pickle vats.

They are just large concrete squares, and you can see that the tags are still on here, small dill pickles, chunk, and large dill pickles.

We are in the last patient unit to move out of the building, the chemical dependency unit, and we've been told that when they were ready to be discharged they could write or draw, paint, whatever, on the walls.

So this area has some really eloquent statements, and I think we can all learn a lot by reading some of these.

This was the apartment of Dr. William Patterson and his wife, Marguerite, they lived here for many many years, Dr. Patterson joined the staff in 1912, was named superintendent in 1927.

He retired as superintendent in 1968.

He and his wife lived here all those years in this gorgeous apartment.

The front of the apartment here that you can see is the only, the outside portion on the first floor was where the portico was, and the Pattersons could go up those steps and out the door, out and to their little balcony out on top of the portico, and survey the kingdom.

It is absolutely gorgeous here, and again, this apartment has not been used for many many many years, and it is absolutely beautiful, original wood floors, original woodwork, sliding doors, absolutely beautiful.

People just rave about this gorgeous building.

And can't believe that there would even be any discussion of tearing it down.

It is a strong structural, beautiful place that we know can be repurposed and redeveloped.

- The Friends of the Kirkbride are a grassroots citizens' group, and I guess there were probably half a dozen of us to start with that had a meeting, and we thought, this cannot happen, this cannot happen, demolition cannot happen.

We have worked tirelessly to just bring out awareness to the community, I think that sometimes a community can have a treasure and the community doesn't always realize what they have.

- Because it is such a unique facility, the potential for economic development using that historic building, is unlimited.

- Certainly, the hope of the city is that we find adapter for use, that this campus can be turned into something where it's job-creating, where it's an economic engine again.

- Just look at it, just look at it.

Too many of these beautiful old historic treasures have been and are still being torn down.

And what they're building today pales in comparison.

Again our whole purpose is to educate people on what we have, and what we need to keep here.

We need to keep it standing.

- See you again next time, on Postcards.

- [Voiceover] This program on Pioneer Public Television is funded by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund, with money from the vote of the people of Minnesota, on November 4th, 2008.

Additional support provided by Mark and Margaret Yackel-Juleen, in honor of Shalom Hill Farm, a non-profit rural education retreat center in a beautiful prairie setting near Windham in southwestern Minnesota, shalomhillfarm.org The Arrowwood Resort & Conference Center.

Your ideal choice for Minnesota resorts, offering luxury townhomes, 18 holes of golf, Darling Reflections Spa, Big Splash Waterpark, and much more.

Alexandria, Minnesota, a relaxing vacation, or great location for an event.

Explorealex.com, easy to get to, hard to leave.

(soft instrumental music)