The lost rural hospital
The utilitarian façade of this rural hospital is clean, albeit a little empty. It’s easy to visualize an ambulance charging up to the front door. But you won’t be seeing it anytime soon because this former medical center in rural Georgia has been long abandoned.
Orderly corridors
Despite the fact that the hospital has supposedly been closed for over a decade, this corridor leading to the radiography department, with its checkerboard flooring, appears orderly and clean. Even the cushion on the abandoned gurney appears to have just been plumped!
Well-preserved medical equipment
This medical body scanner, which appears to be an MRI machine, appears to be operational despite the fact that the technology is now 10 years old. While it is a time capsule, the room has been left in pristine condition, as if the physicians had simply gone out for lunch. In the southeast of the United States, scores of rural county hospitals have shuttered. Since 2005, nine rural hospitals in Georgia, including this one, have closed.
Financial hardship
It’s a little worrying to see an infectious garbage container left in this room! In comparison to today’s technology, the computer displays and other equipment here appear enormous. Unfortunately, this critical care center had to shut due to massive debt. According to Abandoned Southeast, it was one of the region’s largest employers, therefore about a hundred people lost their employment when it closed.
Time-warp wards
One of the reasons rural hospitals might face financial difficulties is that their patients tend to be older, poorer people who frequently lack medical insurance. This room appears to be ready to accept a patient, with everything in place, including a commode chair. Authorities are hopeful that the plant may reopen one day, which is why no equipment has been removed. Let us hope they are correct.
The doomed Charity Hospital
Charity Hospital in New Orleans formerly provided high-quality healthcare to everybody. It was created in 1736 from the estate of a French shipbuilder who left money to build a destitute hospital. It was one of the longest continuously functioning hospitals in the United States until its closing, having been in operation for 300 years. These Art Deco-style curving tower structures, which had occupied different locations throughout the ages, became the principal site in 1939.
Philanthropic medical centre
It was formerly reputedly the second-oldest and second-largest free hospital in the United States, with 2,680 beds. Every year, Charity Hospital serves around 100,000 patients who cannot afford medical care. This decaying chamber, located at a premier teaching hospital, may have been a lecture theatre where students could watch medical demonstrations.
Hurricane Katrina strikes
Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans in August 2005, flooding the lowest levels of the hospital. According to Abandoned Southeast, medical equipment was swamped and the morgue flooded, sending victims drifting down basement passageways. For over a week, some 200 patients and employees were stuck in the hospital without power or air conditioning, with few medical supplies and food. Some patients tragically perished.
Funding pulled
In this secluded area, you can view the destruction wrought by floodwater. Volunteers attempted to reopen Charity Hospital following the disaster, but attempts were thwarted by local authorities, which advocated for the construction of a new hospital. University Medical Center, which cost $1.2 billion (£885 billion), opened in 2015. Unlike Charity, it provides private medical care as well as treatment for the uninsured.
Multimillion-dollar development
An upper-floor ward has been devoid of furniture but appears structurally untouched since the day it was abandoned. Finally, it appears like Charity Hospital’s fortunes are turning. The building will be redeveloped for $300 million (£221 million) in 2021, with a combination of research areas for medical students, residential flats, a museum, and shops. Let us hope that this historic structure may be saved.
The derelict marine hospital
This hospital, which opened in 1884, was originally built to care for wounded sailors operating on the Mississippi River. There were nurse’s quarters, a laundry, a kitchen, and administration buildings. The majestic neo-classical red-brick hospital building shown here was erected in the 1930s. It is designed in the Georgian style, with a slate roof, copper cupola, limestone columns, and a blue-domed bell tower.
Multitude of medical facilities
Because of the high humidity in the area, the crumbling walls of this ancient hospital hallway are likely flaking. According to Abandoned Southeast, each wing housed patient rooms and day rooms, while the central area had a dental ward, surgery room, a sound-proof chamber for hearing exams, and nursing stations.
Protected historic location
Here is the dental clinic, complete with a terrifying freestanding machine in the center of the room. It was most likely intended to attach dental instruments, but deterioration has turned it into a scary tiny robot with an arm poised to attack! Several structures were demolished and replaced throughout the years. Fortunately, those that survive are now on the National Register of Historic Sites, which means they can’t be demolished, though neglect and the weather continue to do havoc.
Treating the uniformed services
This chamber has been stripped to the bone and shows no traces of previous fixtures and fittings, however the spooky mesh door gives the appearance of a jail. The Coast Guard, marine cadets, military forces, and government personnel wounded on the job used the facility. The hospital closed in the 1960s, and a museum leased half of the land, while the federal government kept the other half. Authorities sold the hospital to a private bidder in the early 2000s.
Residential conversion
There are no patient records remaining here since everything has been meticulously wiped away. Take note of the army stickers on the door and cabinet, as well as the blue wall tiles, which have held up fairly well. Construction on converting the structure into flats began in 2019 while respecting the original elements. It is now finished, and residences will rent for $1.50 (£1.11) to $1.75 (£1.29) per square foot, or around $1,000 (£737) to $3,000 (£2,212) per month.
The languishing mental health hospital
This is a group of buildings that used to be part of a mental health institution, but the stately edifice is now engulfed by trees that are taller than its roof. According to Abandoned Southeast, it was the first mental facility in the United States entirely for the African-American population when it opened in 1870. Hundreds of patients were transported here from other hospitals and municipal prisons. The hospital included a four-story administrative structure that was encircled by three-story wings that housed six wards.
Sinister secure wards
The eerie brilliant red, yellow, and blue colours over these inside doors appear strangely dissonant, especially given the hospital’s terrible background. As the patient population grew, new structures were constructed on a regular basis. Each structure housed patients according on their diagnosis, including wards for persons suffering from chronic sickness, TB, epilepsy, and psychosis.
Work and recreation
Take a look at this abandoned hair-styling equipment in a public entertainment area, which also has a vintage TV in the corner. The faux-brick wallcovering is flaking off on one side of the room but not the other, maybe due to humidity. Patients grew peanuts, wheat, okra, melons, pumpkins, and radishes on the asylum’s fields, which provided a balance of labor and relaxation. Nonetheless, medical techniques like as isolation, mechanical restraints, hypnotics, and worse were undeniably cruel.
Abhorrent practices
With its peeling paintwork and harsh stencil writing, this decrepit stairway appears really eerie. With over 5,000 patients by 1950, the institution was severely overcrowded. One unit reportedly jammed more than 300 patients into a single room. As a result, additional structures were constructed, including a geriatric facility and a maximum-security forensic unit. Surprisingly, in 1980, investigative reporters unearthed documentation revealing that over a thousand individuals were sterilized between 1924 and 1952.
A shameful past
In this decaying area, where ceiling tiles have fallen away to show wiring, the metal hydrotherapy pools seem unsettling and frightening. Since 1968, the hospital has admitted all patients and has been desegregated. An inquiry of the institution in the 1990s discovered various abuses, including the excessive use of shackles. The hospital is still operational today, having shifted to newer buildings as the original ones deteriorate and are eaten up by flora.
The crumbling tuberculosis sanatorium
This massive red-brick structure is designed like a fortress, and for good reason: a lethal illness lurked behind its formidable six-story walls. The hospital cared for patients with tuberculosis (TB), a dangerous bacterial illness that mainly affects the lungs. By the 1900s, it had become one of the top two causes of mortality in the United States and a public health concern.
Long-term treatment
A greying gurney and walls splashed with wetness and rot may be seen in this dull, filthy corridor of the hospital. Sanatoriums were associated with disease control when the government assumed responsibility for public health initiatives. The word ‘sanatorium’ basically means ‘place of healing’. Yet, once hospitalized, you were most certainly there for long-term therapy.
Opened at the height of the epidemic
Patriotic flags abandoned on these pristine mid-century modern chairs stand in stark contrast to the extensive damage to the walls and moss on the concrete floor. TB was an indiscriminate murderer, killing both young and old individuals. According to Abandoned Southeast, construction of the huge hospital began in 1936 and it opened its doors in 1938, with 268 beds.
Overcrowded corridors
This ransacked room has a broken ceramic washbasin and drawers that have been ripped open. When the hospital originally opened, there was no treatment for tuberculosis, and it was frequently regarded as a death sentence. Because the sickness was highly contagious, the sanatorium rapidly ran out of beds, forcing patients to be packed into passageways. Some patients are believed to have spent years in isolation.
Modern science finds a cure
A lone chair in this room serves as a memory of all the patients who once walked the hallways of the hospital. Fortunately, an antibiotic treatment for tuberculosis was discovered in 1943. Subsequent antibiotic discoveries in 1965 resulted in the disease’s effective general treatment. Fortunately, patient numbers fell, and the sanatorium closed in the 1980s. More of Leland Kent’s outstanding photography depicting America’s interesting, hidden areas may be seen in his new book.