While many were out on Black Friday shopping away, I had other plans…
Kings Park Psychiatric Center is located in Kings Park,NY, on the northern coast of Long Island, and about an hour’s drive from Brooklyn. It was in operation from 1885 until 1996. Situated on 521 acres, KPPC was almost like a self-sufficient town, with its own railway spur and power plant. It had power before many other parts of Long Island did. About five miles of service tunnels connect many of the buildings underground.
The 13-story Building 93 (above) which housed geriatric patients, was at one time, the tallest building on Long Island.
Go below the jump for more…
Now, 153 acres of KPPC is the Nissequogue River State Park, where the buildings still sit and rot. The other 368 acres lie vacant as well, with the exception of one building still in use as a small hospital.
I did a bunch of research on KPPC. I read a lot of stories about deplorable conditions here back in the day, as well as the usual mental health horror stories… lobotomies, electroshock therapy, insulin shock therapy, etc. It all went on here for quite some time.
It’s been heavily vandalized in some areas, as you can see from this picture of the morgue in Building 7:
A favorite target of urban explorers, bored Long Island suburban kids, copper pipe thieves and “paranormal” seekers, its fate is unknown. A study concluded last month, which looked into the price of demolishing all 57 buildings, revealed it to be 215 million dollars, with 86% of that for environmental issues, as there is a ton of asbestos here, which was quite visible, in addition to lots of flaking lead paint.
For now, it’s all on hold. The word is that it will be protected from development, but in these uncertain times, who knows? We visited 8 of the 57 buildings, so a return trip may be in order someday.
You can look at the complete slideshow of the photos(45) here.
Also, here’s a short but good documentary about KPPC that was included on some low-budget horror flick filmed there a few years ago.
Part 2:
Almost as if the building itself is undergoing some sort of slow torture.
It’s surreal seeing pictures of that vacant nightmare here at GMD.
I was admitted to Kings Park in 1976. There are no urban explorer photographs of the building I was briefly in, which was razed as a fire trap decades ago.
When I worked as a paralegal with the L.I. regional Protection & Advocacy office in the late 80s/early 90s thousands of people were still confined at Kings Park. Under federal law we had the right to go into those buildings.
What I saw was indeed deplorable. What I couldn’t see, but felt, was worse: the accumulation of enough true horror stories in one place to be near-palpable. And what made it more horrifying was that people weren’t horrified. It was business as usual.
Forced drugging, forced electroshock and arbitrary confinement are still regular features of New York’s mental health system.