Kings Park Psychiatric Center
On Saturday we finally ventured out to Long Island in hopes that we'd be able to creep on a 57-room abandoned mansion that I learned about back in November. The mansion is literally surrounded by a golf course, and because our day was going to be spent doing things of questionable legality (aka trespassing), we thought a cold, windy day would keep prying eyes off of the golf course, and us. Well, unfortunately (for us) the mansion seems to be undergoing a renovation or is at least much more well-secured than we expected—video surveillance, a new fence, chains, locks and new plywood over broken windows—so we did a quick walk around and then moved onto Plan B.
I had very little current information about the mansion, so I had drafted a Plan B before making the trip—to explore Kings Park Psychiatric Center in Kings Park, Long Island. KPPC was in operation from 1885 until 1996 when it was closed by the State of New York. The hospital campus has contained more than 100 buildings during its 111-year run, although I had only heard about one—Building 93. A 13-story, neoclassical building built in 1939, #93 was used for patient housing. Floors began to close in the '70s, and less than a third of the building was in use when it closed for good in 1996.
I was surprised to find several other buildings sitting abandoned, but I had my heart set on getting inside of #93. It wasn't as easy of a creep as the New York City Farm Colony (or anywhere near as nice of a day), I'm not entirely thrilled with the photos I got, and my tripod fell out of my backpack and broke (ghosts, probably ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ )—but it was easily my favorite abandoned building experience to date. Our very first creep was an abandoned hospital on Staten Island, but a psychiatric hospital has always been top of my wishlist.
I'm not exaggerating when I say that I could have spent weeks exploring Building 93, but we only made it through two (of the 13) floors before deciding to leave because we were so cold. That cold and windy weather that I had sought for the mansion creep? Not so great for exploring a building whose windows had all long been broken out. We mistakenly assumed that being inside of a structure would at least shelter us somewhat from the gale-force winds, but it felt inexplicably windier and colder on the inside (ghosts, again ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ). I was bummed that conditions were so miserable, but I was beginning to lose feeling in my hands (and my patient, understanding dude had just about run out of both of those qualities).
After nearly 20 years of sitting abandoned, I expected the place to be empty but it was full of stuff—chairs, hospital beds, clothing, medicine cups—and I felt like we hit the abandoned hospital jackpot. Psychiatric hospitals are by design labrythine and difficult to get out of, or in our case, into. Even if we had wanted to take something, there was physically no way to get it out of the building (getting ourselves out was harrowing enough)—but that didn't stop me from falling in love with all of the Charles Eames / Herman Miller-esque fiberglass, pastel-colored chairs scattered about.
After extracting ourselves and warming in the car for a minute, we briefly explored two more buildings on the campus—a doctor's cottage and more patient housing (deserving of their own post)—but it's a return to Building 93 that I'm already dreaming about.
