The Greystone Park Kirkbride building’s future just got a little brighter. A special task force charged with developing a preservation plan for the building was just established by a bill that passed New Jersey’s state senate by a vote of 38 to 0 yesterday! The bill was sponsored by New Jersey state senator Bill Codey. The eleven member task force will be comprised of state employees and politicians, plus five members of the general public including “a former patient or family member of a former patient at the original Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital.” The task force will submit their plan within six months after their first meeting. Read more: Codey Measure to Preserve Greystone Park Approved.
This doesn’t mean preservation is guaranteed for the building, but it makes it much more likely. I’m especially pleased to see the unanimous vote which indicates there’s a lot of support for saving this historic structure. Hopefully within a year (or even less) the task force will have created a solid preservation plan and Greystone’s outlook will look even better.
This is a “reprinting” of an email message from Preserve Greystone, the group dedicated to saving the Greystone Park Kirkbride building.
“On Thursday, March 25, the statewide historic group Preservation New Jersey will be holding an ‘Endangered Sites Summit’ to draw attention to five Places in New Jersey that are particularly at-risk of decay and demolition but particularly promising for reuse and valuable as landmarks. A few Preserve Greystone members will be at this idea-sharing, strategy-formulating season to present on Greystone and discuss the state of efforts to save it. Afterwards, there will be a press conference to draw further attention to issues discussed and the objectives set. As an intensive discussion group, the Summit is limited to about 20 participants, but the press conference is open to the public; the bigger the turnout the better a message it will send to politicians and the media of the interest people show and the stake they feel they have in these sites. I’m sure the other groups are rallying their troops and it will be good to have a sizable Greystone contingent too.
The press conference will be held at Centennial Hall in the Newark Public Library, 5 Washington Street, Newark, NJ 07102 at 12:30PM (the same location as the Summit earlier that morning). Please feel free to email mcgovernix@gmail.com with any questions.”
A few days ago, squad546 on the Asylum Projects forum told me that Independence State Hospital is now represented in Google’s Street View. I soon after went looking for other Kirkbride buildings to see if there were any other new additions since I last checked. Below are the ones I found that you can see clearly. (more…)
A little over a month ago I wrote about a promo for the television series House and how it contained footage of the Greystone Kirkbride’s interior. However, more than one person told me that there was no sign of the show filming inside the interior. I can now confirm they were correct since Fox released a video about building sets for the interior of their fictional Mayfield Psychiatric Hospital. You can watch the video at www.snakesonastick.com. Better check it out soon because the video will probably be replaced eventually.
It’s amazing how much detail and work went into the show’s effort to reproduce the look of Greystone. I still don’t understand why they didn’t just use the hospital itself. Seems like they could have spiffed up a few areas for a lot less work than it took to build these sets.
House fan (and occasional KB.com blog reader) Deborah was kind enough to notify us that the above promo for House’s upcoming sixth season is now available on YouTube. The promo has plenty of Greystone Kirkbride shots and a healthy serving of interior views too — something I hope will be a regular feature of Season 6. Stay tuned…
In case you missed it, the first shots of the Greystone Kirkbride appeared on the House season five finale: Both Sides Now which aired about two weeks ago. You can now watch the episode online at Fox’s web site. Greystone makes its appearance just before the 42 minute mark. The footage is brief, but it’s a nice view and really captures the building’s imposing bulk. I was a little surprised to see that they didn’t try harder to make it look more like an active hospital, but maybe that was an artistic choice?
Fox’s hit television series “House” is currently shooting at the former Greystone Park State Hospital according to this article on NJ.com: TV Show “House” to Film at Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital. It sounds like the production is trying to keep things under wraps for now, so there’s not much information other than that the hospital will “play” the fictional Mayfield Psychiatric Hospital on the show.
Unfortunately, scenes from Greystone probably won’t appear on the program until next season. Also, the area will be closed to the public while filming takes place. I won’t be surprised if a few Greystone “regulars” manage to do a little spying though:) Not that I recommend or endorse such things mind you.
Another little interesting tidbit from that article is that a movie titled Marvin’s Room was filmed at Greystone Park. I wasn’t aware of that and will have to check it out to see what kind of footage of the hospital it has.
3) UA Making Plans to Weather Storm
This article doesn’t go into much detail about the University of Alabama’s impending purchase of the Bryce Hospital campus, but it’s worth noting that the school still plans on making the acquisition in spite of the turbulent economic climate.
There’s a new web site concerning the fate of Greystone Park at www.preservegreystone.org. It’s owned by the group dedicated to preserving the Greystone Park site for recreation, open space and historic preservation, instead of residential and commercial development. If you’re looking for information on what’s currently happening with the Greystone Park campus, preservegreystone.org will keep you up to date. (more…)
I’ve been out of touch with the latest on Greystone Park, but there was an item in the news yesterday about protests over it’s possible sale to commercial interests. Apparently there are laws in existance that prohibit the grounds (and buildings on them) from commercial development, and state that they must be used for parks, farmland, open space and/or for historical purposes (as in a museum of some sort).
Last month, a group of area residents and government officials requested that the New Jersey state government adhere to these laws and reverse theirprior approval of a property auction. While I believe whole-heartedly in the rights of citizens to have a say in what happens in their town, I can’t help but think this is bad news for the Greystone Kirkbride building. It’s hard to imagine the state and/or local government will decide to foot the enormous bill for preserving a building like Greystone in times like these.
I was hoping to find out more about this before posting, but I haven’t had much luck. If anyone knows anything about how this development could affect the preservation of the Kirkbride, please comment and let us know. Thanks.
was filmed at Greystone Park. I wasn’t aware of that and will have to check it out to see what kind of footage of the hospital it has.
