Western Center was also a state facility for the mentally disabled and was located in Canonsburg, Washington County, Pennsylvania.
The typical floor plan, with long rambling wings arranged "en echelon" (staggered, so each connected building still received sunlight and fresh air), was meant to promote privacy and comfort for patients.
These asylums tended to become large, imposing, Victorian-era institutional buildings within extensive surrounding grounds which often included farmland.
Clinging to a belief that architecture influenced human conduct, they proposed smaller cottage-like structures to replace the Kirkbride-plan hospitals.
These cottages were to be arranged in a village, an homage to the Belgian town of Gheel, where citizens looked after mentally ill people who for centuries gathered there to worship at the shrine of St. Dymphna, the patron saint of lunatics.