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"We float down here, we all float..." lol. Sorry, I couldn't resist, its the first thing that popped into my head when I looked at this picture. Motts, my mom and I love your pictures, great job with all of them and keep it up, we love looking!

It's nice how the televisions on the left are in a row with the windows on the right.

for a second......i thought was a....soap dispenser! jk lol

i can't stand vandalism. there's a hospital close by to me (thats also on this site) that i like to walk around every couple of weeks to take pics, that is so graffited in some places that i know now why they have such tight security. they don't bother me because i'm a little older now and carry a camera, tri-pod, gas mask, flashlights and a knife...not a crew of teenagers and spray paint....

it does look like a good place to have a frosty on the clock! lol

the gated area was called a "sally port. The guard in the towere could let a vehicke into the max facility by isolating it between the gates, where it was searched coming and going. The little building in front was "the hole", a small group of just 4 cells where inmates were sent for isolation for fighting ect. They were usually in "the hole for 7 days or less. Total isolation. Only contact was froma officer who brought a food tray to them 3x per day via a small pickup truck from the chow hall. I served a few times, I recall driving the little navy surplus pickup and going inside to feed the guys.

this was the stairs up to the top of a towere. When you reported for work in the towere, you arrived at a door outside the wall. The guard on duty would lower a key on a string, and you'd open the door and go up. The other guy would leave and you'd reverse the procedure.
(high tech stuff in 1975)

these were cellblocks 2, 4, and 6. inmates entered from side doors on each side near the front. The actual front door only led to the officers area. 3 officers to a cell house in 1975. Inmates lived on eith the top or bottom side of the left or right portion of the building. The right side people had no contact with the left side people.
This was maximum security, not a college dorm, or even a medium security dorm.

this door led to the officers area.

Inmates who lived in the 5 cell blocks "behind the wall" got an hour of recreation in the small yard beside their cell house daily. No mixing with inmates from other cell blocks allowed. CB3 inmates had to recreate indooors in a room. The word recreation was a stretch. Fresh air outside was about all there was. A couple of old basketball hoops and some shadowboxing was about it. However there was a softball field and there were games on summer nights. I remember sitting in tower #5 which was right beside home plate, and looking down on the games some nights.

officers were secured behind bars at the head of these catwalks. There was a control box where we could open one or all cell doors remotely with switches in the box. In one cell house, (cell block #3) behind the wall, we held super security inmates. They never left the cell without first being cuffed before we opened their cell door. These were dangerous guys who had earned their way to "CB 3" . To read some of their histories in their files, could be an interesting read. Very bad deeds on the street, and some in other prisons, as well as in Lorton.

This was the stairs at the rear of each cell block. Inmates who were housed on the second (upper tier) had to file up these stairs upon returning from the chow hall or the recreation yard which was just outside the cell house. At the top of those stairs was a small room with a TV. I watched a Sugar ray Leonard fight on tv with inmates there one saturday afternoon in 1975. Thay were all cheering for their hometown hero. That room was a bit unnerving, as you were there alone, and nobody from the front of the cell block could see you back there with the inmates. We didn't have cameras. At least one officer stayed secured up front in the cell house, whenever the other two were inside with inmates doing a count or just patroling the cell block.

I worked "behind the wall" for 12 months in 1975. It was an intersting place, full of many different personalities. It was an experience not to be forgotten.

Don't be sad...after facilitys like this were closed on Long Island many former patients wondered the streets often worse off than when they were "inside". Bayshore suffered terribly when Pilgrim State closed and released former patients to the streets. Today the live in group homes funded by the state in suburban neighborhoods. I have one such group home on my block and believe me those folks are just as isolated from the community as when they were in the facility. I am not talking about the criminally insane of course.

How very sad to see the condition of a once beautiful Facility. My mother worked at KP back in the late 70's as an R.N. Many many people worked there thier whole lives. It and the other Mental hospitals here on Long Island should never have been closed. They provided excellent care for patients and long term employment for thousands.
We Americans place little value on saving the past, in Europe buildings 600 years old are still used to this day. Thanks for the photographs however depressing they are.