Kings Park Psychiatric Hospital was founded in 1885 to alleviate overpopulation in adjacent asylums. KPPC, built on 800 acres, swiftly evolved into a self-sufficient farming business, complete with its own railroad spurs for coal and supplies. What was formerly one of the major facilities for the mentally ill now has less than 20 hospital structures.
Kings Park Psychiatric Hospital is a decommissioned psychiatric institution on Long Island. The ruins of Long Island’s Kings Park Mental Hospital are frequently touted as the ideal backdrop for a horror film, and numerous have been filmed there. At its height in the 1950s, it accommodated almost 9,000 patients.
The institution, which was in operation from 1885 until 1996, spent its 111-year lifespan relieving overcrowding in Brooklyn hospitals. Since its closure in, the entire site has been falling into disrepair, and it now has a distinct and melancholy beauty. It previously held thousands of New York’s mentally sick, and the treatments administered there were terrible even by today’s standards.
Kings Park Lunatic Asylum was founded in 1885 in response to overpopulation in adjacent asylums. Nevertheless, 10 years later, due to “complaints of patronage and waste of resources” from both the institution’s personnel and the general public, the state of New York took over the asylum, and the name was changed to Kings Park State Hospital. Kings Park began as a collection of cottages designed to avoid the high-rise asylum paradigm, which was already considered as harsh.
But, as New York City’s population increased throughout the 1930s, demand soared, and in 1939, the organization resorted to erecting Building 93, a 13-story edifice whose architecture was startlingly identical to what it had intended to avoid. To fulfill the hospital’s growing demands, 150 structures would be built on the grounds during the next 20 years. Building 136 was added as a medical support facility, Building 138 was for patient wards, and Building 139 was for the wards’ kitchen and dining hall. Buildings 40, 41, and 42 were constructed separately for geriatric and ambulatory patients.
KPPC, built on 800 acres, swiftly evolved into a self-sufficient farming business, complete with its own railroad spurs for coal and supplies. Its own farms, cow barn, piggery, butcher shop, tailor, mortuary, and power plant were all available to the hospital. The hospital began as a farm colony, with patients tending the fields and growing their own food. At the time, this was the major way of treatment.
Patients continued to pour into the clinic until it reached a population of nearly 9,300 in 1954. By the time Kings Park reached its peak patient population, the original “rest and relaxation” farming concept had given way to more invasive procedures such as pre-frontal lobotomies and electro-shock therapy (which KPPC touts the badge of being one of the first facilities to utilize such techniques). While these operations were considered pioneering at the time, they were frequently administered to patients without their consent and, in some circumstances, were employed as punitive measures for disruptive patients.
During the following several decades, the population of the packed psychiatric facility with once-questionable practices progressively declined as medicated regimens with medications such as Thorazine became popular as a type of therapy and advocates worked to relocate patients into smaller community clinics. With the introduction of this new outpatient therapy, the necessity for such a huge institution began to dwindle, and similar clinics throughout the country began to close.
As a result, during the 1990s, the population had declined and many structures had been demolished. The hospital was closed down by the state of New York in 1996, and the few surviving patients were relocated to Pilgrim Psychiatric Center. Some of the structures are still standing today, abandoned and deteriorating, while others have been razed. Nissequogue State Park presently occupies the former hospital grounds.
The remaining acres of hospital land were added to the state park by the end of 2006. KPPC, with its rising structures and severe design, now stands in sharp contrast to the beauty of the surrounding countryside. What was formerly one of the major facilities for the mentally ill now has less than 20 hospital structures.
On August 13, 2012, demolition of two abandoned buildings began: Building 123 (Group 2) and Café 56. The deterioration of the remaining structures has been gradual. Some of the more stable structures, such as Building 93, are still getting offers for what to do with them, one of which is to convert them into luxury flats.
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