LCG&HS hears history of the Lincoln State School, later named Lincoln Developmental Center

[August 19, 2016]   LINCOLN - The Logan County Genealogical and Historical Society welcomed Bob Gephart as the guest speaker for the August meeting Monday evening. Mr. Gephart worked at the Lincoln State School for over thirty-six years and spoke about his experiences and the history of the institution.

“I was living in Springfield in the mid-sixties and needed a job. I really did not have any options for employment. This was the time of the Viet Nam War and a friend of mine and I saw an ad in the paper advertising for employees for a new program at the State School,” he said.

He went on to explain that it was a joke between them because they had no idea what the Lincoln State School was or any experience as a “child care aide.”

They drove to Lincoln and applied. Gephart was hired and his friend was not. This began a thirty-six year career at the Lincoln Development Center, as it came to be known.

“I enjoyed every minute of my time at the State School. It was a wonderful place to work,” Bob Gephart said.

He started out at $315 a month, which was a very good salary at that time. He received the necessary training for the new position and never looked back.

While there, Gephart became interested in the history of the unique institution that was a landmark in Lincoln for well over a century. While he was employed at LSS, the institution celebrated its 100th anniversary in 1977.

The idea for a state institution for people with serious physical and mental problems was started in Jacksonville, Illinois in the 1860’s. Illinois was looking for another location for an additional facility and selected Lincoln as the site. According to Gephart, the selection process was fraught with politics, and Lincoln was selected over several other cities. There was not even a source of water at the site. There does seem to some truth to the old rumor that Lincoln was selected because the town lost out being selected as the home of the University of Illinois many years earlier. According to Gephart, Lincoln was considered as the home of U of I, but it was not a serious thought.

While working at the Lincoln State School, Bob Gephart looked around to see if he could find any remnants of the early days of the institution. When it was started in 1877 on forty acres, the idea was to have a safe place for folks with special needs.

The original building had unique architecture and was said to have been built with over one million bricks. As more buildings were added to the campus, different styles of architecture were used such as Georgian and Tudor.

The original building housed the patients, as they were called, and the staff. The requirement that staff live at the institution continued long into the twentieth century.

The Lincoln State School was designed to be self-supporting. Gephart found remnants of the mattress factory and the shoe manufacturing facility. Chairs that were built there now reside at the LCGHS. It even had a school of nursing in the early days to provide well-trained staff.

In the 1890’s, the Colony was added to the original State School. The Colony was located where the two prisons are now south of Lincoln. It was designed as a farm to provide food for the entire place. The people housed at the Lincoln State School and Colony worked in all of the areas of manufacture and farming. They were not paid. This continued until a court mandate in the twentieth century stated that all workers at such an institution had to be paid.

One odd part of the history of the Lincoln State School concerned many of the people who were housed there. Its original mandate was as a safe environment and training for people with severe physical and mental handicaps.

However, it came to pass that many persons living at the State School seemed quite normal. Families who could not afford to care of their children left them at the State School. These were children with no physical or mental issues. This was prevalent for many years, especially during the Depression. These children were normal in every sense of the word. “Whole families lived there at various times,” said Gephart.

“There were five-thousand patients living at the State School when I started,” said Bob Gephart. It was an economic engine driving Lincoln. Gephart retired one year before Governor George Ryan closed the place in 2002.

Many members of the audience at the LCGHS meeting spoke up to say that they also were employees at one time at the Lincoln State School. They remembered their employment there with fondness, all saying that it was a wonderful place to work. They all mentioned the wonderful marching band at the school that was made up of patients. The band entertained around the area for many decades.

They also mentioned the tunnels running under the campus that carried steam pipes from the power plant that produced heat and electricity. They were large enough to walk through.

The annual May Day celebration was also a popular event for the State School and the community.

The Lincoln State School and Colony has passed into history, a huge part of Lincoln’s past that seemed as if it would never end. The large campus with many buildings still standing sits empty on the southwest side of Lincoln. Some of the historic buildings have been demolished. The State of Illinois currently spends around one million dollars a year to maintain the grounds and buildings.

The Logan County Genealogical & Historical Society meets the third Monday of the month at 6:30 p.m. in the research office at 114 North Chicago Street in Lincoln. They always have an interesting speaker and the meetings are open to the public.

[Curtis Fox]