14 Comments Posted by KPSHMRU

The external fire escapes were added around 1980 or so.

The bodies of dead patients were released to their family. If they were unclaimed, they were buried in the hospital cemetary, which is located near the water tower.

There were fire hose boxes on the walls at numerous locations. Vandals obviously dragged out a hose.

Sounds like someone went off their Thorazine.

The federal government has no control of state institutions. They were built way before there was any type of federal aid to states. Patients later received SS money, which went into their own accounts, not to the state. The state later received federal reimbursements to help with institutions somewhat like acute care hospitals receive some money to pay for indigents.

Bldg 123 - kitchen/dining room.

It was. The ceilings were once tin. The fireplaces were operational. The room you see was originally a dormatory. The wall on the left was added very much later to divide the dormatory into a big dayroom and two smaller dormatories. The double hung windows allowed great ventilation.

That is ground level basement of kitchen/dining room Bldg 123. Group 2 was built on top of a hill and 123 was built on the slope. It connected via tunnels to 122, 124, and 40.

From 1980s when the building was used as a daycare center.

That is Bldg 40

The light you see in the vertical line of windows is from the sun setting to the west behind the building. Electric lights are arranged horizontally along each floor by ward room/hallway. Stairwells were also lighted, but that vertical line of lights does not follow a stairwell.

Correction: the hospital actually began to decrease patient population during the 1970s as "community" facilities were replacing the state hospitals. We all know how well that went; patients stopped taking medicine, walked away from the homes, many living on the streets of NYC. By the time Reagan took office in 1981, the patient population had already decreased tremendously.

A problem with "capitalist society?"

Maybe you should try seeing without your "red colored glasses". How much freedom of speech was there in your darling socialist states, such as the Soviet Union, China, and Nazi Germany? Please!

Building 40 was used as a private daycare center during the 1980s. All patients were gone from Group II circa 1980. That mural was painted during the daycare times.