Thirty Day Photo Meme - Day 4
Jul. 4th, 2014 09:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elrhiarhodanDay 4 - A Photo Of A Historic Building
August, 2009
Building 27, Pilgrim State Psychiatric Hospital
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For sixteen years, I lived about a quarter-mile from the back entrance to what was once the world’s largest psychiatric facility - Pilgrim State. When we first looked at what would be the condo that my folks purchased after selling the house I grew up it, my eldest sister and I drove around the grounds - it wasn’t open to the public, but it wasn’t closed off, either. My sister wanted to see (for some unutterably creepy reason), the cemetery, but we didn’t find it. Instead, we looked at the hundreds of abandoned buildings. Many were small, cottage like structures and some even had swings and children’s playground equipment. We thought that maybe these were houses for the resident staff, but it was only when we stopped and really looked that we noticed the heavy iron bars on the windows and the doors were solid steel.
But the time I took this photograph, all of those cottages and many of the very large buildings had been torn down. Pilgrim State is still an operational psychiatric facility, but approximately 90% of the original facility has been abandoned and the clients are served in much newer facilities.
August, 2009
Building 27, Pilgrim State Psychiatric Hospital
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
For sixteen years, I lived about a quarter-mile from the back entrance to what was once the world’s largest psychiatric facility - Pilgrim State. When we first looked at what would be the condo that my folks purchased after selling the house I grew up it, my eldest sister and I drove around the grounds - it wasn’t open to the public, but it wasn’t closed off, either. My sister wanted to see (for some unutterably creepy reason), the cemetery, but we didn’t find it. Instead, we looked at the hundreds of abandoned buildings. Many were small, cottage like structures and some even had swings and children’s playground equipment. We thought that maybe these were houses for the resident staff, but it was only when we stopped and really looked that we noticed the heavy iron bars on the windows and the doors were solid steel.
But the time I took this photograph, all of those cottages and many of the very large buildings had been torn down. Pilgrim State is still an operational psychiatric facility, but approximately 90% of the original facility has been abandoned and the clients are served in much newer facilities.
