kings park psychiatric center

Kings park
psychiatric center

1885-1996

Suffolk county long island

The back of the notorious "Building 93"

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Kings Park Psychiatric Center is the hospital's most recent and most common name however it is also known as its former names of The Kings County Asylum, King Park Lunatic Asylum, Kings Park State Hospital, Long Island State Hospital and Northeast Nassau Psychiatric center.

"The Kings County Asylum" was established in 1885 as an extension of the Brooklyn County Hospital complex as an institution meant to relieve crowding from hospitals closer to New York City. Although it was called an asylum, the facility operated as a farm colony that was a self-sufficient community where farming, construction, clothing making, and food production were all on-site activities that both patients and staff participated in. 

​Building 94 was built in 1953 and used as a laundry building for the entire KPPC population

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 Opposite side of building 94 which faces the empty lot where building 44 once stood before demolition. This platform was the loading dock for trucks to deliver laundry to and from the building. 

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Electrical control panel in building 29 which was the power plant built in 1967 

Inside of building 29

Instruction manual in control room of building 29

Row of computers in the control room

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The hospital began using insulin therapy in 1937 and shock therapy in 1939. The use of electro-shock therapy continued and by 1948 the third floor of building 93 was the designated Shock Therapy Department floor. December 1951, Dr. Meyer Rosenberg began performing pre-frontal lobotomies on selected female patients until eventually performing them on more patients which there are limited reports of. Luckily, the introduction of Thorazine and other antipsychotics put an end to these invasive procedures in 1955.

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Stairs in building 138

View from one of the top floors of building 93

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​The asylum soon became another institution in need of relief after an overwhelming increase in patient population. In 1895, ten years after its opening, the asylum was handed over to New York State and underwent a series of name changes throughout the following years. 

​1897 - New York State Hospital
1900 - Long Island State Hospital at Kings Park
1905 - Kings Park State Hospital
1974 - Kings Park Psychiatric Center
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After the state took control of the hospital, the expansion took off. The property consisted of 150 buildings, one of which being the massive, thirteen story building 93, a power plant, and railroad station. The hospital's number of patients and staff members even outnumbered the population of the neighboring town, Smithtown before it reach it's peak population of 9,303 in 1954. ​

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 The back of building 29 where the majority of the industrial equipment is kept 

 The front of York Hall (building 80) was the hospital's auditorium and theater 

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The campus was originally comprised of small wooden cottages since the larger linear plan asylums were viewed as inhumane, but with the increase of patients, they had to resort to larger structures. By the late 1930s, building 93 was constructed and this enormous 13 story building was the epitome of what they wanted to avoid when establishing Kings Park. ​Building 93 was originally built to be used for patients with long term physical chronic illnesses. At first, the top floors with small dayrooms were used for bedridden patients while the lower floors with larger dayrooms were for more mobile patients. The hospital's central pharmacy was also located in the building and In the back of the building was the kitchen and employee dining hall. 

 Corridor connecting building 138 to building 139

 Top floor of building 93 which has suffered severe damage to the floors 

Industrial section of the power plant building 

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Due to media exposés and public concern about the conditions of these mental institutions and state hospitals, many facilities began to close including Kings Park. The state began closing buildings starting in 1970 and in 1974 the institution was renamed the Kings Park Psychiatric Center. Building closures continued for the next 22 years until the facility permanently closed its doors in 1996. Any patients that were not released or brought to group homes, or nursing homes were transferred to the nearby Pilgrim State Hospital in Brentwood. 

The four former major mental hospitals of central long island 

1. Kings Park Psychiatric Center
2. Central Islip Psychiatric Center
3. Pilgrim State Hospital 
4. Edgewood State Hospital

View from the roof on the back side of building 93 looking over buildings 94 and 29

In November of 2010, the property was evaluated and it was determined that it would cost somewhere around $215 million to demolish the remaining 57 buildings and safely remove the asbestos piping. A large portion of the property is now a designated part of the Nissequogue River State Park and construction efforts on the less decayed buildings are slowly but surely moving along.

A suspicious fire and roof collapse after snowstorms this winter left heavy machinery precariously leaning 

Within the past few years, there have been countless arrests of trespassers on the property, multiple fires believed to be arson, a police rescue of three women trying to jump to their death off of building 93, and a rescue of teens stranded inside of a locked patient ward. Kings Park has recently stepped up security since the bodies of four teens were discovered at the nearby Pilgrim State Hospital in Brentwood. MS-13 gang members are believed to be using both Pilgrim State Hospital and Kings Park Psychiatric Center as meeting places and dumping grounds for their illegal activities and most recent murders. 

references 

Downes, Lawrence. "Erasing the Past at the Ghost Hospital." The New York Times, 4 Aug. 2012,

Ellis, Will. "Kings Park Psychiatric Center’s Building 93." AbandonedNYC, 14 June 2014, abandonednyc.com/2014/06/17/kings-park-psychiatric-centers-building-93/.

Frishberg, Hannah. "Long Island's Infamously Decrepit Kings Park Psychiatric Center in 53 Photos." Curbed, 6 Mar. 2015, www.curbed.com/2015/3/6/9984414/kings-park-psychiatric-center-photos-abandoned.

"Kings Park Psych." LI Oddities, 2013, lioddities.com/asylums/kings-park-psych.html.

"Kings Park Psychiatric Center -." Kings Park Psychiatric Center - A Documentation, s.albalux.com/webpage/main.html.

"Kings Park Residents Want More Police Around Psych Center." News 12 Long Island, 24 June 2016, longisland.news12.com/news/kings-park-residents-want-more-police-around-psych-center-1.11963657.

"MENTAL HOSPITALS: NEW YORK." Journal of the American Medical Association, vol. 137, no. 4, 1948, p. 385.
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Patient Living Conditions at Kings Park Psychiatric Center: New York State Commission on Quality of Care Unannounced Review in August, 1985. NYS Commission on Quality of Care for the Mentally Disabled, 1986.