Comments

Twug!

I love you! I was thinking the SAME thing!

No doubt why it was installed Peter! I wonder if the people who eventually re-fit this place (or more likely, tear it down) will appreciate the aesthetic and financial value of that centrepiece or whether it will just be smashed and slung in a skip along with those hideous couches :(

I'd still have serious qualms about removing something like that even though it is beautiful and its eventual destruction almost inevitable. Not the easiest thing to slip under your jacket and carry back to the car either... even if it weren't suspended 20 feet from the ground!

okay, it is not the same hospital--but does any one know of the one i am talking about? it is by a beer distributer and i think it was a veterans psych ward that was closed down some time in the 70's

I believe that this may be the hospital that i squatted in for a few months a few years back, is this the hospital off of south street and if it is has there been any changes (i.e. official development) in the past 4 years?

Looks like an old arc welder, we have one similar in our shop

wardsman -

Amen. :-(

Everyone who thinks this is so "sexy" should spend time assisting here as well. How is anyone brave who goes into an abandoned morgue? It's easy to be somewhere when there's no actual bodies around. I know because I work in the same building with our morgue (in the basement of the building my office is in) and I walk past it most days (and nights) to get to the hospital next door, even when we have had power failures. Even a morgue with someone in it is not particularly "scary." Now, go into a functioning morgue while procedures are underway and see what is really done - THAT is what takes bravery.

Some people get a cheap thrill out of other peoples' misery. There is a difference between having a fascination with death that is put into constructive uses and being a gawker who profits emotionally off of others' misfortune.

You want a thrill - go out and take some food and a blanket to a homeless person who is so psychotic they don't understand they are freezing or starving to death. That will get your adrenalin rushing but it also might do something for someone instead of allowing you to wet your pants in your own self-projected fear and then bravely take the scary story back to your "admiring" friends, most of whom are too smart to get a thrill that way. And you know, the next time one of them loses a close family member, they will look at you differently because of the way you disrespected the people who have died by making light of their deaths like this.

I have as much of a gallows humor as anyone. However, the fact that people in the MR/DD population are now living past the age of 30 is a huge change in the last several decades, and it is due to the incredible care these folks have received as well as the improvements in equipment and medicine (and funding, obviously). The folks I work with are becoming geriatric now. That is exciting to me, because these folks never used to live this long. At the same time, the group of people who still remain in ICF-MR facilities are those with the most medical challenges, and time is catching up with a lot of them. Every time one of them dies, I lose a little part of myself. I admit I have a hard time when people make jokes about morgues in institutions because many of the people who have died in these places were friends of mine. To go into here and make light of the place, to tag it, to steal parts of it, to take pix of people lying on the slabs thinking they are so brave - yeah, I know it's people just trying to make light of mortality. It's still the place that used to hold the last remains of someone's sister, someone's daughter, or someone's brother. And if that person was related to you, the bravery aspect would disappear and other emotions would take its place.

I love these pictures and I am glad they are here because they tell a fascinating story that needs to be told. They would tell a much better story about all of us if they didn't include people being such (dare I use the word?) asshats to equate walking through an abandoned morgue with a statement of their personal bravery and worth.

I have a phone from the late 1920's and I also have a green phone likethe one here

i cant count how many times i vomited

u think its cool to see dead people,u can have my job of putting broken people in cadaxer bags.putting there guts back in and sewing them up with string after there skulls are cut open ,there heart lungs are cut out then.wash my hands then going home to the misses and kids.my wife never asks me how was my da;;;;you can have my job then mr cool/

If you live nearby this place, go and grab that lamp in the ceiling quick! I would go there myself but the problem is that I live in Sweden. The lamp is made by Danish designer Poul Henningsen. His company PH have made lots of lamps but this one is rather sought after. Interesting is that the model is called "Cone" which you usually find on... pines! Here in Sweden the value on an old one is $1000 or more.

Please tell us here if you went and grabbed it!

I want one of those old-fashioned phones! I want one of the really old ones, like from the '20's (sort of candlestick style). They sell ones like that nowadays, but their touch-tone. I want the old-fashioned dial. I would guess this particular phone is from the '70's?

there are many tunnels, some go from old section to the new section of byberry. REALREZ@AOL.COM

I am not much for ZOOM-in shots unless they are focussing in on writing or serial #'s. The large pan-shots make you feel as if you are there with the photographer, taking it all in. I still appreciate the experience.

Enter one Knight in Shining Armor. Add one soap box. Working with the MR/MH population is difficult. Patience is a must, as well as the need to be alert in some cases. AS with ANY population, you may have to deal with violence, threats upon your person, and verbal and physical abuse. Being handicapped should not make you a pariah; there is violence in both worlds. Also, not everyone who works with these folks is abusive. Where I worked, client abuse was not tolerated. Granted, things in the past used to be bad for MR/MH people, and they WERE treated poorly, but things have come a long way in the field. Normalcy is what the State screams on a continuous basis. Which is great on paper, and goes a long way in protecting clients' rights. But, I have "lived" cases where some of my people were coddled and treated like gold to the point that it was ridiculous. They wanted for nothing and were rarely held accountable for their actions (and some of these were high-functioning adults). That is not normalcy.

whats that last number?!?! would creep me out even to TRY calling that.