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.
My great-great grandmother is buried in the potter's field/hospital cemetery after spending the last 23 years of her life at KPPC. She is in an unmarked grave like most, but I'll hopefully be placing a marker there soon. Maps exist of at least some of the occupants, and my gg-GM was lucky to be one of those marked. So sad that she's been forgotten...but not for much longer if I can help it.
Another great shot. What I love about the morgue shots, by the way, isn't that they churn a morbid curiosity, but that they humanize things... morgues are so hidden (not that they shouldn't be, death's not an easy subject to face) from normal life while they are such an integral part. These shots and ones like them are the only contact some will have with this type of situation, in life anyway, and it's a cleaner, safer way to ponder and observe, far from the last activity it held....