Staten Island Hospital: Abandoned
As soon as I found out about an abandoned hospital on Staten Island, I knew that it was perfect for my first abandoned building adventure. I've creeped on plenty of abandoned things from afar, but I've never really had the courage to go inside of any—until recently. Luckily I had the very best creepin' companion to help me make the leap, and it ended up being one of my favorite adventures to date.
I definitely do not endorse breaking the law, and trespassing/breaking into anywhere is bad—let's just get that out of the way. I also try to live by the "take nothing but photographs" rule, which we strictly adhered to, although we did find some wonderful things. I don't know much about the history of this particular hospital, but it opened in 1837 and basically became abandoned from the top-down—lower floors were occupied by dental clinics and children's programs into the early 2000s (the last date we saw on anything was 2005).
The artifacts definitely got older and more plentiful the further we went upstairs. In one room we found a filing cabinet overflowing with records, most of which were from the 1960s. Various checks, doctor's slips, accounting records and patient index cards poured out onto a table. My favorite document from 1970 showed an expense of $46.05 paid to "Staten Island Pickle Works." One of the attic rooms contained what might actually be the world's creepiest dental chair and the most wonderful pink cabinets filled with medical tubing and other debris. We also found two separate rolling IV stands—one of which had a bag attached whose contents expired in 1984.
On one far end of the top floor, we came across a room piled high with boxes of patient records. We found admissions papers for people who struggled with addictions, a birth certificate from Puerto Rico and binders full of the personal information of people who were vulnerable and needed help. To see the most intimate details of so many people's lives reduced to a soggy, decaying pile was really sad.
The layers upon layers of peeling paint (so much institutional green and pink!) reminded me of Eastern State Penitentiary or the abandoned hospital complex on Ellis Island. It's fascinating to me how places become abandoned, and what gets left behind when they do. A lot of the windows were open or broken, and a few of the doors were left wide open, so I'm sure nature helps things along, but the decay process is so interesting to see. A lot of the building had been raided, presumably by scrappers, but it overall felt very structurally intact and in pretty good shape, considering the neglect.
We spent about 3.5 hours exploring every single room, and it ended up being the absolute perfect abandoned place for novices like us. We did briefly see a cat, which was slightly unnerving, but otherwise we had the place to ourselves. I love trying to figure out the history and imagining the different lives that the building has lived. We were very glad to find that most of the interior hadn't been ruined by graffiti, although we did see some on the first floor. I'm not sure what the future holds for this place, but I'll never forget how kind it was to us on our first abandoned adventure.