The establishment of Rest Haven began with the old Schuylkill County Almshouse, a single building erected in 1833. The almshouse was a kind of jail for the infirm, poor, elderly, insane, epileptic, criminals, and those with developmental disabilities - basically a place for those "unwanted" in society at that time. Conditions were atrocious, as can be imagined by housing these many types of people under one roof. A written account from 1915 recalls a horrific scene from earlier days:
Near the site of the small house along the Turnpike at the County Home was a log shed much resembling the open sheds used for the sheltering of horses built at taverns in the country and at country churches. It was nothing more than a shed with a roof, back and sides. The front was open. Here both the sick, aged and insane were confined. The insane were chained with heavy chains and attached to heavy iron balls. The chain and ball system of preventing their escape and injuring other persons was then used. -Miss Catharine Byerly (via schuylkillhavenhistory.com)
The almshouse expanded several times by adding a building for the elderly in 1859, a building for the insane in 1869, as well as a bakery and laundry buildings in 1872. Efforts by Dorthea Dix and others sought to eradicate the almshouse system by moving the mentally ill into separate facilities specifically constructed to treat the insane.
In 1911 construction began on a mental hospital on the hill behind the almshouse; the old "pest house," a building for those with cancer or venereal disease, was demolished to make way for the new institution. It opened in 1913 as the Schuylkill County Hospital for the Insane, built at a cost of $571,000 and had the capacity for 600 patients.
Like state-run mental hospitals, Schuylkill County Hospital utilized a vast swath of farmland consisting of 283 acres to produce food and dairy for the residents, often using patient labor as a form of "occupational therapy." As the hospital population declined, these farming operations ceased by 1961 and all patients were consolidated to the 1912 building. The other structures were either demolished or purchased by the Penn State Schuylkill university and renovated.
The facility followed a natural shift in its role from a psychiatric hospital to a nursing home (as many aspects of these fields overlap), operating under the name Rest Haven. A building was erected in 1969 to work in tandem with the older 1912 structure, however the latter was closed by the Department of Health in 1994 due to its deteriorating condition. The older structure sat vacant until it was demolished in 2010 after a fire ravaged the interior.
