Location:

Status: Abandoned

I’d heard all about Kings Park Psychiatric Center from a few friends who were very adamant that I take a trip out to Long Island to check it out. Being an asylum enthusiast, I was interested in what I had heard about KPPC. After seeing the pictures of this massive abandoned mental complex and learning that it included a swimming pool, a gym, and bowling alley, I was sold. To say the least, I became VERY interested in visiting KPPC.

I did a little bit of research on the history behind KPPC and learned that it started out as a tiny farming hamlet on the north shore of Long Island, known as Indian Head. In 1869, Episcopal priest William Augustus Muhlenberg , who had founded St. Luke’s Hospital in New York City to help the underprivileged and handicapped purchased the land and built an orphanage and hospital for the mentally ill in a rural setting. St. Johnland, as he called it, was a self-sufficient community complete with cottages, churches, and homes for the disabled, elderly, and orphaned boys. In 1872, officials in Brooklyn purchased 870 acres adjoining Muhlenberg’s community and the Kings County Farm was established in 1885 to care for the poor and mentally ill. This too was built in a rural setting for the benefit of the patients, so consequently, more buildings were constructed along with a railroad leading out of the town. This town was then called “Kings Park” since it belonged to the Kings County Psych Center.

Aside from patients residing at Kings Park, doctors, nurses, and their families moved in to this community as well, thus allowing it to grow. By 1892, there were four large buildings, 30 cottages, cafeterias, heating, and dairy production. Since the community had become so self-sufficient, it was then recognized as an official state hospital for the mentally ill.

More and more patients came to Kings Park, causing the population to increase and conditions to worsen. There were complaints made by the medical staff and the public of overcrowding, waste, and other poor conditions. These complaints caused the state to take over Kings Park.

Around the turn of the century, there were so many patients at Kings Park that they outnumbered the residents of Smithtown, which was considered the “rest” of the town. In fact, most of the residents of Smithtown were employed at Kings Park.

Soon, Kings Park progressed into a complex that contained over 150 permanent buildings that included a bakery, bandstand, laundry, furniture repair, amusement hall, and a nursing school. Kings Park prided itself in being a self-sufficient farm colony for some time, but then new medicines to treat mental illness were developed and there was no longer a need for a complex such as Kings Park. At its peak, it had about 9300 patients, but soon this number began to decline. Some buildings were still in use, but Kings Park finally closed its doors in 1996 and the remainder of the patients were shipped to Pilgrim Psychiatric near Brentwood or kept at Kings Park and given day passes. In 1998 before it closed for good, it had over 16,000 patients.

The first building my group and I explored was building #7, which contained endless hallways, hauntingly empty classrooms, and most chillingly, the morgue. As one stands outside on the massive grounds of Kings Park and stares upward at the cold, angular buildings that loom overhead, one would not expect that the interiors would be so bright and welcoming.

We roamed through the hallways, sometimes encountering mysterious doors that were stubbornly locked tight, and felt no need to utilize our flashlights we had so carefully packed with us. Even more surprisingly, most of the windows and mirrors were intact and the walls bore minimal graffiti. If not for the emptiness and echoes within those bare walls on which the paint was peeling, I could have fooled myself into believing that I heard the hustle and bustle of doctors, nurses, and patients throughout the buildings.

Our main objective on this trip was to find the morgue–and let me tell you, we had a heck of a time. We moved along confident we were on the right track, only to be met with a door locked tight as tight can be. We thought, “No problem. We’ll just exit and enter through another door.”. Easy enough, right? WRONG. Apparently, not many have penetrated the doors and windows of Kings Park because we found ourselves on many occasions unable to get into the parts of the buildings we desired to. In order to reach our final destination of the morgue, we had to squeeze back in through a tiny window. After wandering around some and taking a few wrong turns, we finally stumbled upon a freezer tray lying in a hallway. We all knew immediately our efforts were not in vain.

Unfortunately, there wasn’t much left of the morgue as we had hoped–only the freezers, a sink, x-ray screens, and a strange contraption–but at the same time, it was to be expected since the rest of Kings Park was stripped down the bare bones. Although there wasn’t much to see, it was by far not a disappointment.

After we were done with building #7, we made our way to building #23, which very much resembled a high school. Our entrance put us in a library full of empty shelves and a stack of old music records, virtually untouched. The hallways led to a woodshop, a gym, and an auditorium. We had heard that building #23 had a large swimming pool and a bowling alley, so we made a point to find those.

The swimming pool was HUGE–my flash wouldn’t throw far enough to take a decent picture, though, unfortunately. At the very bottom of the pool were bowling balls, so we knew we weren’t too far off from the bowling alley.

And sure enough, right down the hall behind a closed door was an almost immaculate bowling alley complete with balls, pins, bowling shoes, and trophies. To add to the eeriness of it all, we discovered a score sheet sitting on one of the tables by a ball return that looked as if it had never been moved.

Kings Park Psychiatric Center is definitely a noteworthy place on the urban explorer’s list of conquests. Not only is there SO MUCH to explore, but the presence of those who once called this mammoth community “home” can still be felt within its corridors.

BUILDING 93

This feature on Kings Park Psychiatric Center just wouldn’t be complete without the majestic Building 93, would it? Of course not. That’s why after the first unsuccessful attempt at photographing the well-known signature of Kings Park, we had to go back and try again. This time, we got them. In fact, we weren’t leaving without them.

There were some creepy underground tunnels that led to Building 93 and we had to scale pipes and wade through water in all of them. A couple of other buildings can be reached from the tunnels, so we were sure to check those out as well.

In one building, we discovered a wood shop where someone from our exploring group was lucky enough to find photographs of some sort of surgery, which was just chilling. We’re not sure why it was in the wood shop of all places, however. In the same building there were an assortment of rooms containing hospital beds and things typical of an asylum. Not so typical of an asylum, though, we found an alien skull. Well…I guess one could say we created one more than we found it. Our guide showed us that if you shine the beam of your flashlight just right on a metal towel dispenser, it creates the illusion of what looks like an alien skull on the wall. It was quite amusing!

While we were there, we also looked around in the steam plant, which always makes for interesting exploration in just about any asylum. It had many catwalks and equipment that was still intact, surprisingly. I’ll bet some people don’t know that parts of Kings Park have power, including the steam plant.

Building 93 looked very much the same from floor to floor–and anyone who’s familiar with 93 knows that there are many, many floors. We didn’t thoroughly explore every floor for this reason, but we saw all the interesting parts.

The most intriguing thing by far in Building 93 is the dayroom in which every wall is covered in strange murals. I’m not sure who the artist of these murals is, but I would wager it was a patient. The murals depict people sitting around in chairs and at tables working with looms and doing other various things patients would be thought to do in the dayroom. In fact, we did discover a few broken looms lying about the debris in this room. Also painted on the walls are an elderly lady and her cat, some nurses, a strange looking man with keys, and a photographer. Could this be the artist? We speculated that perhaps the photographer was the one who painted these interesting murals as a way of illustrating what he himself sees. If anyone has any speculations of his/her own or actually knows the truth behind these murals, I invite the reader to share.

We explored identical floor after identical floor of dorms, dayrooms, and small confinement rooms but never got to the roof due to some technical difficulties. I hear the view is a sight to behold.

Many would say all of Kings Park is a sight to behold and I would be one to agree. No matter how many visits we take to Kings Park, unfortunately, we’ll never see all of it.

- Ember, 2004