Kings Park Psychiatric Center: History
(Below) Building 29 with The "Quads" In The Background.
New York City had an overwhelming amount of mentally ill individuals. Kings County (now Brooklyn) decided to build an institution where patients could be stay and be treated that was located far from the loud noisy and dirty city.
It was named the "Kings County Lunatic Asylum." It was created in 1885 as an addition to the Brooklyn County Hospital. The location for the new asylum was in Suffolk County.
Kings County Asylum at first consisted of a few buildings where residents could be rehabilitated. It wasn't much....yet.
As the need for mental asylums increased, the "Lunatic Farm" was transferred over to New York State in 1895 where it was made the "Long Island State Hospital."
Going back to its original history in Brooklyn, the facility was named yet again, to "Kings Park State Hospital" in 1916. Today, the area around Kings Park Psychiatric Center is residential and commercial developments, but back in 1916, it was all woodlands. A small town started to develop around the hospital, and today it is the town of Kings Park. The hospital is the reason for the towns existence.
The entire hospital grew to became (to what I call) a mini-city; the patients and staff performed many, many different tasks. To list a few: farming, construction, the production of clothes, and preparing food.
Kings Park State Hospital expanded to over 150 buildings, which included a power plant and a railroad spur to transport passengers, coal, and building materials from the Long Island Rail Road.
The hospital included a section for Tuberculosis patients, as well a whole section specifically created for tending to for veterans of war.
At the turn of the century, the hospital had grown to 2,697 patients and 454 staff workers!! The hospital reached its largest population at 9,303 patients in 1954, and as a result, became overcrowded like many other state run mental hospitals at the time.
The cost to run Kings Park State Hospital became such a problem for the state, the hospital began closing buildings in a slow but steady process in 1970. Another reason for the hospital to shut down slowly, is the discovery of modern medecines and better ways to treat and care for mentally ill patients. so the facility wasn't really needed.
In 1975, the facility became what we all know today as the Kings Park Psychiatric Center, or "KPPC." Many patients were transferred to the nearby Pilgrim State Hospital, nursing homes, private group homes, or were released.
Finally, the entire facility closed in 1996. As of today, a very tiny number of buildings are still in use for different reasons.
In the year 2000, the grounds of the war veterans treatment area of KPPC opened as the Nissequogue River State Park.
Today, many, but not all buildings are in the process of being demolished and the surrounding areas cleaned up.