Sadly, the beautiful Kirkbride building at the Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital is at the end of her life. Demolition is looming in the very near future for this architectural beauty.
In honor of this glorious structure, I have added a new photo gallery on my website: http://amyheiden.com/greystone-park-psychiatric/
I wish the outcome had been different. Seeing this beautiful building vanish has broken my faith in politicians and has given me very little hope that many structures like this will be saved in the future years to come. Many Kirkbride structures are already gone and now the Greystone Psychiatric Hospital will be added to the list.
Once the largest contiguous building in the United States, this structure opened in 1876 and was designed to house a few hundred mentally ill patients of New Jersey and the surrounding areas.
Sadly, in a few months, this asylum will be nothing more than dust. Abatement has already begin inside this massive Kirkbride building.
Within four years of this facility opening in the late 1800′s, the hospital was already accommodating 800 patients, though it was only designed to care for 600. At the hospital’s peak, in 1953, Greystone housed over 7,000 patients, many soldiers suffering from PTSD post World War.
