Riverside Hospital for the Insane opened on October 18th, 1871 with sprawling grounds, lavish gardens, ponds, and fields all designed by leading architects. The entire foundation of the hospital  was mined from a local quarry located on the grounds. Budget constraints were overstepped with leaps and bounds in the construction of the beautiful buildings, thereby angering officials, who questioned why the large amounts of money were needed to begin with. They didn’t understand why the most lavish of building materials were used, such as sixteen-inch thick walls between rooms, and Southern pine on the floors, which was a very expensive type of wood. A motion was created to halt the construction, which was barely 1/3 done even though the budget had already been exceeded, but it was overturned, and construction continued until 1895, even while the hospital was in operation.

The complex was supposed to have two wings with five wards each, one wing for male patients and one for females, but construction had to be cut short in order to save money, and so only two female wards were created. The resulting buildings are constructed in a gothic-revival design. The main Kirkbride building had to be brought up to code as new advances had to be installed into the building such as fire escapes and running water. Because of this, the entire basement is like a giant labyrinth of pipes and wires. The complex treated over 6,000 patients at its peak in over 100 buildings. The hospital was slowly but surely abandoned in sections, beginning in the 1970s, but Administration was still used until approximately 2001 when the property went up for sale.

On May 31 2007 a massive fire broke out in the south wing of the administration Kirkbride building. A major portion of the wing was completely destroyed, partially because firefighters could not get water to fight the fire. Water had been turned off on the property years ago, including the fire hydrants. An investigation eventually ruled lightning to be the cause. Whether Hudson Heritage, the current owner of the campus as of 2005, will rebuild the wing for its redevelopment plans is uncertain.