Middletown State Hospital

Revisiting a trip that took place in late fall one year, where the last warm rays of sun struggle against the oncoming cold light that winter produces. I love both types of light for photography- they both produce such dynamically different results.

These New York winters are fairly dismal and cold though, and it's always refreshing to get some warming light flooding the halls of these old psychiatric buildings. It becomes easier to remember the human element, to recall the hundreds of lives affected by these institutions, both the good and the bad.



Far too often I'm repulsed by seeing these beautiful historic places turned into cliche subjects of B-movies. Flaunted as haunted, wards for psycho-killers (Qu'est-ce que c'est?), the images become those of electroshock machines, botched lobotomies, straightjackets and padded walls. I understand the macabre fascination here- most institution conditions were horrible. I just don't see how making movies like "Death Tunnel" and "Madhouse" do even the sheerly exploitative fascination with insane asylums any justice.

I have my own aesthetic loves in hospitals. I love lonely chairs, rotary phones, and solariums. And keys.

I  couldn't begin to shake a stick at the number of wheelchairs I've seen in the past few years, but seeing a neglected storage room full of them still inspires great emotion. From the tiny chairs for children, to the potty chairs for the incontinent, to every conceivable style of reclining, stationary, restraint-laden, angled, metal, wood, PVC and everything between- to know each of these was used by a disabled person to grant them mobility, often in an enclosed, closely supervised environment is still a testament to their human qualities.

But I digress- back to my late autumn hospital. Middletown State Hospital is located in New York state, several hours' drive north of the City, I found it to exude warmth. A  reasonably small psychiatric building as compared to some I've seen, the luminosity of its walls, the lack of vandalism, the sprawling day rooms all brought a sense of community to the building.


Late afternoon light through an empty room.


A wooden seclusion room door with an inset 1" thick piece of circular glass. The shadows are cast from the barred window within the room.


A green day room.


Warm corridor looking down on multiple seclusion rooms.


Multi-colored connector hallway. Long exposure shot using the last 10 minutes of light streaming through the hospital.


Dark hallway as the sun has nearly set.


Collapsed floor- a lot of the building is suffering from severe structural decay and multiple floors have collapsed, some on top of one another.


Old hairdryer, moved into the collapsed cafeteria on the bottom floor of the building at some point when the building was being vacated.

Small a building as it was, Middletown is among my favorite state hospitals.

Admiral's Row- further exploration

An addendum to my previous post on Admiral's Row- I'd like to briefly address the controversy surrounding its potential for preservation.

A lot of people on both sides of the debate like to bring on the discussion of "Well, if the Row had been properly taken care of 20 years ago..." Had the Row not been neglected for over 20 years, would the buildings be salvageable? Of course. Do most of the remains of the buildings remain salvageable? To one degree or another- yes. A lot of the wood additions in the back of the buildings have collapsed and need to be demoed. The two buildings on the Western side of the campus seem to have seen the worst wear; a wood addition that once housed a pool table, standing in spring of 2005, documented on the Officer's Row Project, now has collapsed in on itself, crashing into a pile to the ground.

But then again, a gorgeous piece of plasterwork from Quarters I (documented as dangling as early as summer 2006), which I commented to my companion The Kingston Lounge "Must surely have collapsed by now," actually remains steadfast, blowing in the breeze, a beautiful remnant of a past century's aesthetic.

Moulding below stairwells litter the Row, their every detail still crisp beneath flaking paint.



Even more ornate crystal, milk glass and the rare brass doorknobs remain, glimmering in their old fixtures, many floors above a ground level which, if not to the incredible credit of a bygone era's architects, should not be able to hold my weight, nor the weight of my tripod. Compared to many of the other doomed historic structures I spend my time trying to document, these stairs barely creaked.


Top of the grand staircase in Quarters B- plaster and snow



From the burned-out attic level of Quarters D. Still strong, if not charred.



An upward view of the same staircase. Carpet remains on all the stairs.



Bottom banister in Quarters G. All the flourishes in each of the 10 buildings varies.


The banisters and railings in most of these buildings are more intact than those in the brownstone I live in.

Did I mention beautiful flourishes? Sadly I have no photos of the interiors of any of the cedar-lined closets. They're as pristine as though they'd been abandoned yesterday.



Doorknobs receding.



Nouveau faceplate.



One of my favorite tiny details from the Row.

As always, there's always more to be said, more to be done, more to research and more to document. In the meantime, Admirals Row was the hot topic at Gothamist, Brownstoner and Curbed, in no small part thanks to the blog posted by Nathan Kensinger. More to come tomorrow.