Specialized Living Center land in Swansea was once part of the county's poor farm

Nov. 29--A Swansea residential facility for people with developmental disabilities closed last week after nearly 40 years of operation due to financial problems.

But that's only part of the story.

The Specialized Living Center property has been a case study on how society deals with the less fortunate for 175 years. Its two parcels of land were once part of St. Clair County Poor Farm and Hospital, which opened in 1844.

"Most counties had some kind of 'institution,' for lack of a better word, that was dedicated to poor relief," said Will Shannon, curator for St. Clair County Historical Society.

Sickness, old age, disability and mental illness often led to poverty, so some people with these conditions ended up at poor farms. There was no Social Security or national welfare system at the time.

The St. Clair County poor farm covered 40 acres, straddling what is now Caseyville Avenue, between Schae Fries Drive and Pensoneau Drive. Its hospital and other buildings stood in the southwest corner, now part of Melvin Price Memorial Park. There also were barns, livestock pens, gardens and farm fields.

"It was an actual farm," Shannon said. "What the people who lived there were expected to do is work on the farm so they could be somewhat self-sufficient. They grew much of their own food."

The poor farm, later known as St. Clair County Home and Hospital, closed in 1955.

"It had served its purpose and had been a very important part of the community," according to a historical booklet published by St. Clair County Genealogical Society.

Right to live in "natural" setting

The Swansea facility for people with developmental disabilities was operated by Parents and Friends of the Specialized Living Center, a private, non-profit organization. Buildings shared the address 1450 Caseyville Ave. in the southeast corner of the former poor-farm property.

In October, Director Carol Morrison notified the Illinois Department of Public Health that the facility was experiencing a "financial crisis" and would be forced to close.

In an interview, Morrison said the Illinois Department of Human Services now encourages guardians to place people with disabilities in small, community-based group homes with more independence instead of large residential facilities with more supervision.

"We couldn't keep it at the break-even point of 61 residents because we don't get very many referrals," she said.

The Specialized Living Center had been licensed as a 65-bed facility for a year, down from its original 100 beds. There were 54 residents when Parents and Friends decided to close.

In recent years, the state has allowed Medicaid and other funding to be used to house people with disabilities in facilities with as few as four residents, said Dana Rozenzweig, executive director for St. Clair County Mental Health Board. In some cases, money is available for at-home care by parents or guardians.

"(The Swansea facility) is a humongous residential-care center by today's standards," Rozenzweig said. "The thinking is that people deserve the right to live in a natural setting, and a natural setting isn't a home with 100 other people."

All Specialized Living Center residents had to be placed in other facilities, Morrison said last week. Some hadn't lived anywhere else for decades. That included Alice Stricker, cousin to retired social worker Mary Rao, 73, of Shiloh, a former employee from 1983 to 1993.

Stricker is intellectually disabled and uses a wheelchair. She was moved two weeks ago to a four-bed, villa-like facility in Carmi with an all-female staff.

"My cousin has a lot of health problems, and SLC was a good place for her," Rao said. "I was upset and really worried about (the move) in the beginning. But once I talked to them, I felt much better about it. ... It may be a blessing in disguise."

Future uncertain for property

Earlier this month, Morrison said the Specialized Living Center property would be sold. The buildings stand on two parcels, one 6.45 acres and the other 5.99 acres, according to St. Clair County records.

The state of Illinois bought the land from St. Clair County in the mid-1970s and deeded it to the Parents and Friends organization in the early 1980s. But there were provisions requiring the property to revert back to state ownership if it stopped being used for the care of people with disabilities.

In 2017, the state agreed to a Parents and Friends request and re-deeded both parcels, removing the provisions, as allowed by 1994 amendments to the Specialized Living Centers Act, said Lesa Branham, spokeswoman for the Illinois Capital Development Board.

"The property is owned free and clear by the Parents and Friends of the Specialized Living Center," Board President Craig Aukamp said last week.

The village of Swansea owns nearly 26 acres of the former poor-farm property, which is used for Melvin Price Memorial Park and Swansea Community Center. Asked if officials were interested in expanding the park, Village Administrator Ben Schloesser said no expansion was planned.

"Certainly, if there are economical options moving forward to expand greenspace, that's always something we would take a look at," he said. "On the other hand, we just inherited Clinton Hill Golf Course, which is now Swansea Clinton Hills Conservation Park, and it has the opportunity to be a nice flagship park."

Aukamp declined to comment on future plans for the Specialized Living Center property. He said staff and board members have been focused on getting residents placed in suitable facilities.

"This really throws those people out of whack," he said. "They're all about routine. This has not been an easy decision. This has been very traumatic, all the way from the board down to the staff and residents. ... We want to help and protect the residents as best we can. That's who's affected most by this."

Residents described as "inmates"

St. Clair County Poor Farm and Hospital dated back to 1844, when Henry C. Million sold 40 acres of land in what is now the village of Swansea to the county for $450, according to the 1881 "History of St. Clair County, Ill." Officials spent $1,149 to build the first structures.

"The people of Belleville did not want the poor farm located so close to the city," the Genealogical Society booklet states. "... In 1867, they wanted to move the facility farther away since it was considered a pest house. This was never done."

The 1881 history referred to the poor farm as an "asylum" and its 110 residents as "inmates."

Poverty was largely viewed as a personal or moral failing in the 19th century, without regard for environmental factors, Shannon said. Poor farms were built to help the indigent, but also to reduce vagrancy, get jobless people off the streets and instill a work ethic.

"It wasn't exactly a prison," Shannon said. "It wasn't the county jail, but it had a reformatory purpose."

A 1900 diagram of the poor farm shows a main complex with men's and women's wards, a detached kitchen with two dining rooms, a "Cripples Dept." and an "Old Men's Dept."

Belleville resident Bob Arndt remembers his grandmother, the late Rose Wegescheide, talking about the poor farm. She began working there in 1908 at age 18. Her job was to strip beds and clean rooms after people died and roll their bodies away on stretchers.

"She told me that the men and women were segregated," said Arndt, 86. "Apparently, there was a married couple, and after dinner, they would sneak out on the patio to be together. I was told that as a young kid, and it touched me."

Today, Arndt is photo editor at the Labor & Industry Museum, where his grandmother's story is part of an exhibit on working women.

By 1913, about 150 people were living at the poor farm. On arrival, each was issued a mattress cover, pillow, wash pan and two clothes hooks. They grew vegetables and raised cows, hogs and chickens. Some 150 fruit trees were planted in 1927.

"Since the County Poor Farm was self-sufficient with its own hospital, it was not surprising that it had its own morgue, undertaker and cemetery," the Genealogical Society booklet states.

"State-of-the-art" facility in 1980

St. Clair County sold more than 12 acres of land in the southeast corner of the poor-farm property to the state of Illinois for the Specialized Living Center in the mid-1970s.

The county built the 100-bed facility using $3 million in state grants. It was one of five such facilities in Illinois and part of a national effort to move people with intellectual and other developmental disabilities out of large state institutions that were viewed as human warehouses.

Terminology also was changing, with advocates for the disabled rejecting "mentally retarded" as a derogatory term.

"The primary objective (of the Swansea center) is to get the handicapped back into the mainstream of the community, or to a less restrictive facility," according to a BND story in 1979. "... The principle is that the handicapped are normal and have the same rights as everyone else."

St. Clair County Specialized Living Center, as it was originally called, opened in 1980. There were six wood-and-stone housing units in a neighborhood-like arrangement and a main building with a kitchen, hair salon and therapy and activity rooms.

"That was a newly-designed system of care that hadn't existed before," Rosenzweig said, noting the facility had a waiting list for beds. "It was considered state-of-the-art."

Two years later, the county transferred operations to the Parents and Friends organization.

By the mid-1970s, the county was using the southwest corner of the Swansea property for civil-defense programs. Officials allowed local historians to scavenge artifacts from the last existing poor-farm building before it was demolished.

The historians saved a clothing cupboard, library cabinet, tin wash basins, cutlery, a mattress cover and ticking pillow, said Judy Belleville, collections coordinator at the Labor & Industry Museum. Spindles from a staircase banister were given to someone restoring an old building.

"If I had known we were going to have a museum, I would have taken a lot more," Belleville said.

Teri Maddox

618-239-2473

Teri Maddox has been a reporter for 35 years, joining the Belleville News-Democrat in 1990. She also teaches journalism at St. Louis Community College at Forest Park. She holds degrees from Southern Illinois University Carbondale and University of Wisconsin-Madison.

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