In 1877, the North Carolina General Assembly appointed a committee to recommend the selection of a site for a facility for the black mentally ill which would serve the state.

The site was described by Governor Zebulon Baird Vance as ideal for a hospital building because of good elevation in a high state of cultivation and central location for the black population.

By 1960, Cherry Farm had 2,300 acres in cultivation, including fruit trees, an apple orchard, vegetables, and sugar cane, with livestock consisting of hogs, chickens, turkeys and cows.

Cherry Hospital began to provide services to all races from the thirty-three designated counties in the Eastern Region of North Carolina.

Despite the push by other states to develop and build asylums, North Carolina continued to resist these efforts due to the high cost of construction.

The efforts of Dorothea Lynde Dix were of paramount importance in swaying legislators to consider the cost savings, and fundamental humanity, of treating the insane.

Dix addressed the North Carolina General Assembly in 1848, petitioning the members to establish formal, humane institutional care for those suffering from mental illness.

[8] A Founders Gallery exhibit, located in the first floor lobby of the New Cherry Hospital, was established to pay tribute to the influence and impact of the efforts championed by Dorothea Dix to care for the mentally ill.[9][10]

The new hospital, designed by Perkins+Will, of Durham, North Carolina, is a single structure, three-story building containing approximately 410,000 square feet, including 9.4 acres of floor space, consisting of residential patient care units, therapy and medical facilities, and service and administrative support areas.

A Groundbreaking Ceremony was held at the new site on October 1, 2010, with then Governor Beverly Eves Perdue and North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Lanier M. Cansler in attendance.

Amenities include a modern laboratory, dental and radiology departments and equipment, internal and external courtyards, a treatment mall (known as the "Hope and Wellness Center") decorated with flexible pictures hung magnetically, gymnasium and exercise room, library equipped with computers, cosmetology and barber shops, and anti-ligature doors/hinges/hooks and tempered glass.

A press release on the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services website, dated October 5, 2016, states all patients were safely moved and now occupy the new Cherry Hospital as of Thursday, September 29, 2016.

[15] Cherry Hospital serves patients from thirty-eight (38) Eastern North Carolina counties including: Beaufort, Bertie, Bladen, Brunswick, Camden, Carteret, Chowan, Columbus, Craven, Cumberland, Currituck, Dare, Duplin, Edgecombe, Gates, Greene, Hertford, Hyde, Johnston, Jones, Lenoir, Martin, Nash, New Hanover, Northampton, Onslow, Pamlico, Pasquotank, Pender, Perquimans, Pitt, Robeson, Sampson, Scotland, Tyrrell, Washington, Wayne, and Wilson.

Cherry Hospital employs licensed psychiatrists, internal and family medicine physicians, and mid-level practitioners who provide short and long term mental health care and services to adolescents, adults and geriatric patients.

Displaying written documents, photographs and other artifacts, the museum depicts the history of the psychiatric hospital opened in 1880 for the African American mentally ill from all 100 counties of North Carolina.

[19] Due to the damage sustained by the effects of the flooding of Hurricane Matthew in October 2016, the museum officially closed its doors on Friday, January 13, 2017.

All artifacts housed in the museum were moved to storage with future plans to rotate these pieces and display them in exhibits in the Founders Gallery, located in the First Floor of the New Cherry Hospital.