The second largest stone building on Earth isn’t in Europe — it’s in small-town West Virginia

It’s the largest hand-cut stone building in North America

The Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum sits in the small town of Weston, West Virginia, and it looks more like a European castle than anything you’d expect to find in the Appalachian hills. Gothic towers, stone walls, long staggered wings.

The whole thing stretches across 242,000 square feet of hand-cut stone, making it the largest building of its kind in North America and reportedly the second largest in the world behind only the Kremlin.

Today it runs as a museum and tour destination, open from late March through early November. But the story behind those walls goes back to the years just before the Civil War, and it only gets heavier from there.

A Baltimore architect designed it to let in sunlight

In the 1850s, the Virginia General Assembly approved a facility for the mentally ill, and Baltimore architect Richard Snowden Andrews drew up the plans.

He worked in the Gothic Revival and Tudor Revival styles, following a layout called the Kirkbride Plan.

Dr. Thomas Story Kirkbride created that model with one idea in mind: every patient room should get sunlight and fresh air. The long, staggered wings gave the building its spread.

Construction started in 1858, but the finished building didn’t come together until 1881.

German and Irish stonemasons shaped every block

Workers quarried blue sandstone near Mount Clare, West Virginia, and hauled it to the construction site. Skilled stonemasons from Germany and Ireland shaped each block by hand.

Prison laborers helped with the early work, too. Four floors of hallways run through the building, and a 200-foot clock tower, finished in 1871, rises above it all. You can see the tower from across town.

Every stone in the place went through someone’s hands before it went into the wall.

The Civil War drained its gold and halted construction

When the Civil War broke out in 1861, the building was only partly finished. The grounds turned into Camp Tyler, a Union military post.

That June, the 7th Ohio Volunteer Infantry marched into Weston and seized nearly $27,000 in gold from a local bank vault. Virginia had set that money aside to pay construction workers on the asylum.

Union forces carried it to Wheeling, where it helped fund the new state of West Virginia. Confederate raiders came through, too, and took building supplies along the way.

The asylum ran its own farm and drilled its own gas well

The whole campus ran like a small, closed-off town. A working farm, a dairy, and livestock fed patients and staff.

A waterworks system supplied the facility’s own water. In 1902, crews drilled a gas well right on the hospital grounds to help power the place.

A cemetery on the property served as the final resting place for patients who died here, and over 2,000 people are buried in it. You can still walk past the cemetery during tours today.

Nine women were the first patients admitted in 1864

Dr. Kirkbride believed a superintendent could only manage a limited number of patients well, so the asylum was designed for no more than 250.

Patients were meant to heal through routine, fresh air, and meaningful work.

The first nine patients, all women, arrived in October 1864 while workers were still cutting stone and laying walls around them.

The idea sounded good on paper: a calm, bright building that could help people get better just by being inside it.

By the 1950s over 2,400 people packed the wards

That limit of 250 didn’t hold for long. By 1880, the asylum held 717 patients.

By the 1950s, that number topped 2,400. People were admitted for reasons that would shock you now, including laziness, domestic troubles, and even egotism.

Overcrowding stripped away the conditions Kirkbride had planned for. Sanitation broke down. Heating and lighting ran short.

In 1949, The Charleston Gazette published a series of reports that pulled back the curtain on just how bad things had become inside.

Lobotomies were performed to reduce the patient count

As the hospital filled past capacity, treatment methods turned harsh by any modern standard. Insulin shock therapy, electroshock therapy, and hydrotherapy all made the list over the years.

In the early 1950s, Dr. Walter Freeman came to the hospital and performed lobotomies as part of the West Virginia Lobotomy Project.

The stated goal was to reduce the overcrowded population, but the procedures left lasting damage. By the 1980s, changes in how the country treated mental illness finally brought the numbers down.

A class action lawsuit helped shut the doors in 1994

In 1986, then-Governor Arch Moore announced plans for a new psychiatric facility.

The hospital closed in May 1994, and remaining patients moved to the new William R. Sharpe Jr. Hospital, also in Weston.

Families of patients had filed a class action lawsuit that pushed the closure forward.

After the last patient left, the building sat mostly vacant for years, and the stone walls that took 23 years to raise started falling into disrepair.

A contractor bought the whole complex for $1.5 million

In 2007, the West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources put the building up for auction. Joe Jordan, a contractor from Morgantown, bought the entire complex for $1.5 million.

He and his family reopened it in 2008 as a tourist attraction under its original pre-Civil War name. Every dollar from tours and events goes toward preserving and restoring the structure.

The building had already earned National Historic Landmark status back in 1990.

Patient paintings and old restraints fill 20 exhibit rooms

The first floor of the main building, called the Kirkbride, holds a museum with about 20 rooms. You’ll find paintings, poems, and drawings that patients made during art therapy programs.

One room displays medical restraints and treatment tools, including a straitjacket and a hydrotherapy tub.

Other rooms have been restored to show what patient wards and staff quarters looked like in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

Museum entry comes with your tour admission, so you don’t pay extra.

A 90-minute tour takes you through all four floors

You have several ways to walk the asylum. A 45-minute first floor tour covers the Civil War section, restored patient wards, and the building’s architectural story.

A 90-minute tour takes you through all four floors, including staff apartments, the medical center, the morgue, and the operating room.

If you want the full experience, an all-day Discover the Asylum tour covers the entire campus, including the Criminally Insane Unit and the Women’s Auxiliary building.

Most tours run first come, first served, so no reservations needed.

Explore the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum in Weston, W.Va.

You’ll find the asylum at 71 Asylum Drive in Weston, just three miles off Interstate 79 at Exit 99. The 2026 season runs from March 28 through Nov. 8, Tuesday through Sunday.

First floor tours start at $15, and four-floor tours start at $30. Plan to arrive 30 minutes early to sign in.

The building has no climate control, so dress for the weather.

While you’re in the area, the Museum of American Glass and WVU Jackson’s Mill Farmstead are both a short drive away.

This article was created with AI assistance and human editing.

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