Advocates hope to preserve Pennhurst complex EAST VINCENT —
Minorities, women and Native Americans are not the only ones
underrepresented among the preserved historic places of the
nation. The former Pennhurst State School and Hospital outside
Spring City might be the most important historical property in
the country that represents the history, struggles and change in
attitude toward the developmentally disabled. At least that is
how the Pennhurst Memorial and Preservation Alliance views it.
Opened in 1908 on 1,400 rolling acres as the Eastern
Pennsylvania Institution for the Feeble Minded and Epileptic,
Pennhurst was a self-sustained campus of 25 buildings that
included workshops, a firehouse, a fully functioning farm and a
barber shop, among other things. Intended to isolate its
residents from the rest of society, it house 3,500 patients at
its peak occupancy in space federal regulations later determined
to be habitable for just 700. Eventually it became famous for
unsanitary conditions and the degrading a