July 17th, 2008
End of an Era
Finally: the new Greystone Park facility has truly opened. Patients moved to their new residence yesterday, marking a major event in the hospital’s long history. According to all reports I’ve read, the new building is a much nicer place and I’m sure the patients and staff will be much happier there.
Hopefully the “tragedies and scandals of [New Jersey]’s long-troubled Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital are history,” as the Star Ledger claims: A New Day Dawns at Greystone Psychiatric. Of course, buildings don’t usually cause tragedies and scandals by themselves, but the improved environment will have a good effect and is an important step forward for the hospital. I can’t help but be reminded of newspaper articles from over a century ago reporting the openings of various Kirkbride asylums. They usually had the same optimistic tone and made similar claims of a new dawn for mental healthcare…
While I don’t believe the Kirkbride is completely abandoned yet, it will be reasonably soon. Such a shame it was left to rot and didn’t lived up to its promise for very long.
While the new building may well be a “nicer place”, it’s certainly not pretty!
Interesting point on the comparison between the optimistic tone of today’s news coverage and that of the coverage in the days of the Kirkbride structures. It makes me wonder how history will judge the modern era of mental healthcare. While the asylum keepers of the 1800s had to contend with a fundamental lack of scientific knowledge and a functional lack of effective medications, today’s hospital superintendents contend with layers of bureaucracy and red-tape that were unheard of in those days, as well as regimented treatment methodologies which allow little room for inspired or creative care. It would be neat to see how this era in public mental health care is viewed in hindsight…
In any case, I’m glad they’re going to maintain the Admin of the Greystone Kirkbride building. I have it on good authority that, while it will be in a sense “abandoned”, they’re going to run the heat and continue maintenance on this portion of the building, which is for the good. They’re also going to be continuing to run the alarms, and the police will be walking through the building, which should help protect it from scrappers… hopefully, the Admin, if not the whole building, will have a very decent shot at preservation.
Weren’t they going to auction off the Kirkbride building?
I really hope that you are correct Rich. We are loosing the best remaining Kirkbrides left and right, Danver is gone, North Hampton is gone, and Hudson is a nothing but a shell. The loss of Greystone would be a horrible loss.
Even if they are planning on running the heat and employee police to patrol it, I doubt that will last for very long. The cost will probably be too great, and considering they already let the wings go into disrepair, I don’t see any reason that they wouldn’t do the same to the rest of it.
I have to agree with Rich on the look of the new building as well. It is U G L Y.
Here is a aerial photo from live.com from about a year or two ago while the place was still under construction.
http://thomas-industriesinc.com/Misc_Pics/Greystone_NewBuilding.jpg
Ouch! That is something of an eyesore. It probably looks better finished and with some landscaping, but I believe you guys when you say it’s not pretty.
WSH: I read that an auction was approved and planned, but I haven’t heard of any developments regarding an actual date yet. Maybe someone more familiar with Greystone can provide an update on that, but I think it’s still in the works, and may be for some time.
Yikes that new one looks like a supermax prison or something. One of the things I always like about the Kirkbrides (and I’m sure it did something for patient moral too) was that they almost looked like some of the nicer resorts of the day (at least on the outside) and were and still are pleasing to the eye.
It looks like a Picaso of a Kirkbride with post art deco themes in a modern industrailized utilitarian enviornment. In short fugly!
Greetings all-
I have to agree that the new Greystone is-bleh, although it is almost as big, in terms of square feet, as the Kirkbride. As for the Kirkbride, according to the Morris Record if a use isn’t found within 5-10 years it will be torn down. The build really is in dismal shape, but I believe it can be saved, if a developer is willing to put the money up to restore it. It struck me as funny they named the new park that was built on the Greystone property Central Park of Morris County in an effort to distance it from the past because of the stigma attached to the Greystone name. I’m sure most of the local people will refer to it as Greystone in any case. Besides, it’s hard to distance the present from the past when there’s this huge hulking building that is still standing there reminding people of the past! Personally I hope they find another use for the old girl. Maybe they could do something like they did in Traverse City. Even better, like they did with Eastern State Prison in Philadelphia. Part of the prison was restored, and is open to the public. The main feature of Eastern State: Al Capone’s cell.
GR
I drove past the front of the Kirk today and it is not abandoned. The parking lots out front are full (they are overflow lots for the new hospital) and all the ext and some int lights in the admin section are lit.
However, those bone brains took out the window a/c units and left the windows open! So now the winter elements are getting into the admin section. There were 3 windows open on the very top floor of the tower in the admin section.