832 Comments for The Ladd School

look at the midel bottom

Going in march baby!!! THANKS MOTTS!!!

I've laid in that bottom one, and let my friends close it.
NEVER. AGAIN.

Great picture! When i first saw it i thought "Final Answer?" from "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire (Thats what i am watching) lol

I was there its real hear and fell all the thiks it was scarry

Does anyone remember Major Morgan? It was a game that was shaped like a small robot.

Your photographic talent is eclipsed only by your eloquence! LOL!

I don't know the dates when the various buildings were constructed, but this banister would be appropriate for 1907 or other early period in the life of the institution. The place wasn't built as a prison or torture chamber - it was a school; it would have had attractive (if impractical) features and details before (as dme noted above) the safety fencing was installed. Some of the architecture of other buildings looks like they had to be built in the 1930s and 1950s.

This entire gallery of images is just stunning - not only do the pictures capture history, but do so in an artistic way.

Thank you for these incredible photos. I live near this facility and used to work at Phoenix House (which is on the Ladd School property). I have always wanted to see the inside of these buildings. It used to give me the creeps just having to drive through them every day. You can really feel the ghosts in this place. Thank you!

Great photography

The rumors about this place are incredible. No, there is no autopsy room. The rooms upstairs from the morgue with the white slab tables were for washing and bathing the patients. When patients died, they were kept in the morgue freezers until they could be picked up by the family or shipped to Rhode Island Hospital for autopsy. They weren't dumped in the swamp. They weren't cremated or burned on a stone in the woods. There was no crematorium. The building with the smoke stack was the power plant and fire station, NOT a crematorium.

The pool and the recreation buildings have been renovated and are now apart of the Exeter Job Corps Academy, a vocational school. You have to drive past the Job Corps Academy to get to Ladd Center and if their security sees you, they will call the state police. There is also a drug rehab and detox house near the Fogarty hospital and if the staff sees you, they will also call the police. A few of the small buildings behind the power plant (including the old pharmacy) are still in use and the power plant/fire station is armed with a burglar alarm system.

I recall the Ladd school from the early 1970's. my grandmother worked and lived there in an apartment on the grounds. this was a sad and depressing place for many unfortunate souls. My grandma was named Jennifer Lee Bvtler.

yea...i was gonna say

don't drop the soup??

lol

I live in Exeter or Escoheag to be exact. We are closer to Norwich, CT than this part of Exeter, which is very close to North Kingstown, RI. In addition to Job Corp, which is run out of one of the most recent of buildings there is the Phoenix House which sits at the back of the complex. As was mentioned, the place is 'wicked' trashed. Job Corp and Phoenix House (detox center) doesn't see much of the gentrified rural population or swampahs that are common in Exeter. Most 'residents' come from the heavily alien populous inter-scummulated cities in and around Providence. Destruction is their game, trashing is their aim. The place is disgusting. THAT is why it is a pleasure to see the other sites photographed here, so little destruction. The Veterans Cemetery sits adjacent to this site and is beautiful as is almost all of South County.

imagine it coming towards you when you look at this picture...i just did xD