217 Comments Posted by jason

They were growing unstable, but many people complained that they were an eye-sore.

This is actually the rear of the building, the front faces the entrance off the pwky. I am sure in its prime the building was quite nice. There was a massive scale model layout of the comple and a huge libary with psych books, including books on NY stats hospitals and archives. the admin bldg also housed the hospitals offices and a bell.

Wow that is something. One of my friends grandmothers was the chief nurse on one of the wards at Pilgrim back in the 30's and she also attended the nursing school. I have also met several formar graduates of the nursing school, and yes, doc's and nurses were reguarly traded over to Edgewood or else where, and all of those nurses went on to work in the State Hospitals across the state. In fact most of Edgewoods staff was housed at Pilgrim and there are still graduates of the nursing school still alive today in that it was operational well into the late 70s.

this one looks like the roof just collapsed in.

I was there the night they were claning out this building (Tanking my own set of photos, of the complex and some of its demolition) and yes they were basically throwingstuff out the windows. I spoke with the forman who said they were mearly cleaning out old debris and espestosis. The building as far as i know was not marked for demolition, as the center stip of the campus is still used and operated by the state and the OMH. The admin building is still used to store stuff in and some times the lights are on inside and can be seen from the sagtikos pwky. As for Bldg 23 and the admid/surgical hospital, they are still there, most of the buildings behind them are still used or in some way operated. the dormatories to the flanking sidea have all been torn down. This was over a year and 1/2 ago, and the rubble still sits there, sort of an erie marker or grave yard to where buildings once stood. Items can still be found inside the debris fields such as wall paintings that somehow survived the destruction. the land contractor wants to put in condos or town houses to the left, a strip mall and aquarium to the right. but since these dorms had been ripped down, no futher advance was made to build these new condos. Now i wonder, who's gonna want to live in a townhouse that stares out at an active psych hospital or go to an aquarium where no large body fo water is present. I went inside the buildings after the doards had been taken down, and they were in amazing shape. it was shuch a waste to destroy them. As for this building, they cleaned it and have left it sitting there with all the old stuff (bedposts, matresses,etc) still sitting outside. I hope they don't tear down these buildings and hopefully find use for them, but their future at the moment is unsure, as long as the stae has control they'll sit there.

Yes it is true that this building housed the office of mental health, and is still used by the OMH. but when Pilgrim was fully functional, this was the directors mansion who ran the entire facility. later it was retro-fitted into multiple apartments for senior staff and served as a sort of "community house" where doctors and nurses would gather for recreation on evenings that they had off. the building also had stone fire places and chandilers.

absolutely