1,927 Comments for Pilgrim State Hospital

Pennhurst was a more or less "local" state school for young people in PA, I would guess over a thousand patients lived there at any one time.. a lot less than 15,000. More patients = more deaths.

Pennhurst had a two drawer morgue by the way, the top door was used to access the refrigeration equipment, much like this freezer.

Why did the morgue in Pilgrim hold 12 bodies and the Pennhurst morgue only hold 3 bodies?

The way everything is set up in this photo, it almost looks like a minature model. It seems fake.

Lynne, thanks very much : )

Nah, that's just the window frame.

Window bars! Who's going to escape?

Cwalters is correct, it is indeed an Amsco 1080 operating table. These were quite pricey back in its days, and are extremly rare now.
(http://www.medicalrepaircenter.com/tables.htm)

Yeh. Would live in that house any day..
How come its abandoned?

The facility was designed to house 15,000 patients during its peak operation.

These half-walls are called "pony walls" and are now illegal according to the new Life Safety Code for institutions (fire code problems). They were used to partition off the room into smaller sections so you could still see what was going on in the rest of the room but you could still section them off for separate activities. They used to do something similar in public schools in the late 70s through 80s until they realized that the ability to see and hear everything going on in the rest of the room was distracting to just about everyone involved and pure hell for the ADHD kids.

I love this picture, the curtain color is a great contrast to the rest of the room

what a strangely set up room, why were sections corodoned off like that?

another great shot!

Great wood, it held up well compared to the rest of the room.
Very nice picture,

CWalters .... lol, are you viewing this site as a mechanic would a junk yard?