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Building No. 12 was constructed in 1940 at a cost of $31,644. It remained in use as an administration building for Muscatatuck State Developmental Center until the Center's closure in 2005. The institution, located in Butlerville, Indiana, became…

This photo of the entrance to Muscatatuck State Developmental Center was taken in 2005. That was the same year the institution closed, the last person living at Muscatatuck having been placed into a community residence on April 22, 2005. The Center…

“Muscatatuck was decertified and lost their ICF/MR certification that they'd had for about 20 years. And that was considerable revenue loss. And so, a decision was made through some -- a lot of discussion to -- that Muscatatuck would be closed.”…

Dr. Sue Gant has 40 plus years of working in the disability field. As an expert with the U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division, Special Litigation, Dr. Gant spent the late 1990s through 2008 in Indiana assisting with the closure of New…

“I came back on Monday and one of the clients had a broken limb and nobody knew how it had occurred,” explains Sue Beecher of a visit to Muscatatuck State Developmental Center. In 1998, Sue was working for Indiana Protection & Advocacy and was…

The Sweetest Little Boy I Ever Knew: A Handmade History for an Institutional Life tells the story of a baby orphaned with disabilities in Nashville, Tennessee at the end of World War II. Despite the loving effort of Edith Mumpower, an older woman who…

It was a "stark" and "demoralizing" environment. From 1977 to 1980, Randy Krieble worked at Muscatatuck State Hospital and Training Center, as it was known at the time. In this video excerpt from a 2012 interview, he shares what a day in the life of…

"You don't train people to get ready to go out in the community; you take a risk and let them go and see where their strengths are." From 1973 through 1976, the Deinstitututionalization Project gave residents at Muscatatuck State Developmental Center…

Thomas Hancock, age 10 months, with nurse at General Hospital in Nashville, Tennessee, October 1946. Thomas entered Muscatatuck State School in 1951, living there until he died in 1981.

“I wish I had recorded all the stories that we heard during those interviews,” stated Bettye Dunham on interviewing Muscatatuck State Hospital and Training Center residents for jobs at the Jennings Training Center in the 1970s. She talked to…