Between Darkness & Light | Rockland Psychiatric Hospital

Urban explorers always have a grail location or a favourite type of location. For many in the northeast of the United States, these locations are related to the treatment of mental illness. Now, I use the term ‘treatment’ loosely because of the long and rather cruel methods used in the past. While many were seen as humane compared to earlier treatments, in our modern context, they are rather terrible. Here in Ontario, we don’t have many abandoned mental hospitals. Most have been torn down and replaced with modern facilities or reverted back to their historical form. I had never explored many mental hospitals, and all of them were located in the United States. My first mental hospital was in 2009, and only one small building, Rockland, would be my first extensive exploration of a mental hospital. But it was not a Kirkbride.

A Note of Warning: This post contains materials related to treating mental illness through the early to mid-20th century, including treatments’ names. These treatments were employed at Rockland with the best of intentions. Some readers may find this post disturbing; disgresion is advised.

The history of Rockland starts with a fire, specifically the fire in February 1923 at Ward’s Island in New York City. The fire, which killed twenty-four patients and three employees highlighted the desperate overcrowding and age of New York’s existing mental hospitals. Many of which were built through the 19th Century. In 1926 a 600-acre property in Orangeburg, New York was selected to build a new model institution for the treatment of mental illness. The core of the new hospital was the Broadacres Dairy Farm as the idea of work for the patients on a farm and in other indusial tasks was viewed as a modern form of treatment. Construction would start in April 1927, the goal to build a fully self-contained hospital with cottages for staff and their families, entertainment facilities, kitchens, dorms, dining rooms, administration, medical, water treatment, power station, and even a school for the children of the staff. The patients dorms were built with thick walls to help keep noise transfer to a minimum. In July 1930, Dr Russell Blaisdell would be appointed the first superintendent. Dr. Blaisdell implemented a rapid admission process to help streamline and classify the patients for the best possible treatment options. The first fourteen buildings opened in 1930 and 1931 and sixty male patients transferred in from Ward’s Island. The hospital continued to grow through the decade, with the first expansion happening through 1932. A dedicated unit for the treatment of children opened in 1936 along with laboratories and a new 1,000 seat assembly hall. The use of insulin and electro shock treatment were started in 1937 along with many other similar hospitals across the state. By this point Rockland’s population continued to grow as did the number of buildings on the site. When the United States entered the Second World War, many highly trained and qualified staff would enlist in the armed services or be drafted, this resulted in a sharp decline in patient care. Neglect, warehouses, and disese ran rampent, and even extreme methods such as lobotomies were used to pacify the population. The arrival of the US War Department which annexed buildings 57 through 60 for the treatment of returning veterans and required 800 patients to be moved to other hospitals from 1942 to 1945.

The post-war expansion of the hospital continued, new buildings opened and research sections added. Neurology, Electroencephalography and Biopsychology units were added under the direction of Dr Nathan Kline, many becoming the largest research units in the world. It was in 1956 that the patient population peaked at 9,000 with only 2,000 staff to support them. The introduction of medications (Psychoactive Drugs) to assist in treatment of mental illness came to Rockland in the 1960s, this allowed many in the hospital to live normal lives without needing to be housed. New units for the treatment of deaf adults opened in 1963. The children’s unit relocated in August 1970 to the new Rockland Children’s Psychiatric Center. The 1970s also saw a push for deinstutionalisation and the patient population started to slowly decline. The hospital began to consolidate and close some of the oldest buildings on site. By the mid 1970s the population had reached 600 patients with many coming to Rockland for outpatient treatments. A modernisation plan was approved in 1985 to right-size the vast campus, the goal to build a new smaller footprint campus creating two dedicated buildings and mothball the older buildings deemed in poor condition. By the time the modernisation plan was completed, the original campus was considered the largest intact and abandoned mental hospital in the United States. The town of Greentown acquired a 350-acre parcel in 2003, with the stipulation that 216-acres were used for active recreation. Greenstown would clear out many of the abandoned buildings, converting the space into baseball and soccer fields. Several buildings were preserved that were part of Rockland or predated the hospital including the DePew House originally built in 1765. The 1970 Rockland Children’s Psychiatric Center closed in 2010 and the building reused in the filming of Orange is the New Black, with the patients moving to a newly constructed building. It wouldn’t be until 2017 that the final sections of the campus would be sold to JPMorgan Chase, the 60-acre parcel was acquired and forty buildings demolished. Through 2018 to 2019 a new 150,000 square foot data centre was completed and opened. Today the only things that remain of the original campus is the rear fence and gates and a small cemetary with those patients who died while at Rockland, their graves marked only by numbers.

The trouble with exploring Rockland is that while most of the campus is abandoned, a small portion remains active. In some cases, the active sections intersect with the abandoned sections. And even the abandoned section received security patrols. By 2010, almost all the original buildings were abandoned. When I first visited the site, I had gone with a good friend and trusted fellow explorer. Because of the size and complexity of the site, having a trusted local guide was vital to enjoying the site. You also wanted a similar exploration ethos to ensure that you had each other’s backs if trouble happened. My guides were knowledgeable and trusted on my two trips, which is good because trouble occurred both times. The first trip went off without incident; we rolled up to the back of the campus and slipped through the gate; being at the back offered the best chance of slipping into a building before a security patrol rolled through. Things were going smoothly; we wandered through a couple of buildings; most were empty, but there were some exciting things. There was another pair of explorers with us whom I didn’t know. We were about to move onto another building but found our way blocked by some locked doors; taking a different route, we found a turkey vulture. The giant bird was not moving and had already thrown up over itself, a defence mechanism. While the one pair was willing to cause harm to the bird, my friend and I were not. Two reasons: one, there was no reason to harm the bird; it was obviously defending something, and two, it would cause a racket, which may attract security. We slipped out without trouble, much to the other pair’s annoyance. The second trip came two years later. Thankfully, I could share the buildings I had seen the last time, and this time, the other explorers were all ones I already knew and trusted. This time, we went into some of the buildings that had been a part of Rockland’s children’s ward. We moved through some interesting sections and found the old daycare packed with various toys. But then went through a wall that was obviously built when the daycare opened and found ourselves in a section abandoned far longer than the daycare. It was creepy to see the difference between the two and know that whole abandoned wings were on the other side of a hastily built wall. From there, we moved into the smaller auditorium and hit the tunnels. The trouble with the tunnels was that it was easy to get turned around, and we were moving closer to the active areas. Then, our flashlights ran out of juice. Working by the light of our phones, we found our way out and headed to the morgue. That’s when we learned security was stalking and escape was needed. Thankfully, we managed to get out and out of sight as a car rolled by. That was enough for me, and we got out quickly. Making up a story in our head that we got lost looking for the old cemetery, as it wasn’t illegal to be on the property, just in the buildings.

The one thing I regret not getting at Rockland is some decent exterior shots or finding the old cemetery, but on both trips, we wanted to stay within the buildings. The trouble is that while we were allowed to be on the property, we did have the look of those who wanted to be inside the buildings. For the interior shots, very little changed between my two trips; I still worked with minimal compositions, looking to my usual straight lines and leading line compositions that became a signature style for my urban exploration work. It also helped that I was working with the ‘big empty’ that I am fond of in many of these buildings. But I also made a point of focusing on details, textures, and items found left behind in these spaces; this was more noticeable on my first trip than on my second. I also played with light painting, which I did not do much, mainly because it drew attention to anyone outside. While I only shot a single roll of film here (this was still at the start of my journey back into film), using colour film was also a good choice. One thing I did more of in the second was switching out from my ultra-wide to a fast 50mm and running handheld through some of the buildings. Despite only coming here twice, I’m rather happy with my photography work at Rockland.

The treatment of mental illness is constantly changing as science learns more about how the human mind works and is affected. Exploring the history of Rockland is an excellent way to peak into how things were done in the early 20th Century and how a hospital can change and adapt to new means. Despite being a horrible place through the mid-century, you can see that it was also always at the forefront of developing modern methods. And even still today, it remains an active place for the treatment and support of those who live with mental illness. One of the most pointed things I came across during the writing of this post is a poem, Howl (For Carl Solomon) penned by Allen Ginsberg in 1959 that gives you a look at the conditions in Rockland when they were at their worst. One final note about the cemetery: while I never saw the one at Rockland, it brought me back to seeing a similar cemetery here in Ontario, which has a lovely memorial. You can see all my images over on Flickr from both trips. You can also find a great deal more images over on Abandoned America which also helped with the research into the site’s history for this post.

Glossary Of Terms
Insulin shock therapy: Insulin shock therapy or insulin coma therapy was a form of psychiatric treatment in which patients were repeatedly injected with large doses of insulin in order to produce daily comas over several weeks.

Electroshock Therapy: A psychiatric treatment where a generalized seizure (without muscular convulsions) is electrically induced to manage refractory mental disorders.

Hydrotherapy: A term that describes how water was used to treat mental illness. While it was used in many ways, the images from the museum suggested that baths and cold water packs were utilized in the hospital.

Lobotomy: A lobotomy is a discredited form of neurosurgical treatment for psychiatric disorder or neurological disorder that involves severing connections in the brain’s prefrontal cortex. The surgery causes most of the connections to and from the prefrontal cortex, the anterior part of the frontal lobes of the brain, to be severed.

Psychoactive drugs: A psychoactive drug, psychopharmaceutical, psychoactive agent, or psychotropic drug is a chemical substance that changes the function of the nervous system and results in alterations of perception, mood, cognition, and behavior. These substances may be used medically, recreationally, for spiritual reasons (for example, by altering one’s consciousness, as with entheogens for ritual, spiritual, or shamanic purposes), or for research. Some categories of psychoactive drugs may be prescribed by physicians and other healthcare practitioners because of their therapeutic value.