Overgrown Ward Building, Creedmoor Psychiatric Center, Queens

Creedmoor Psychiatric Center opened in 1912 in Queens Village, Queens, as the Farm Colony of Brooklyn State Hospital, later becoming an independent state psychiatric facility in 1926. At its peak in the 1950s, the campus housed more than 6,000 patients across dozens of buildings on the sprawling grounds. Deinstitutionalization policies and a shift toward outpatient care led the state to close or repurpose much of the original campus starting in the 1980s. Several of the historic brick ward buildings, built in the Collegiate Gothic style common to early-20th-century state hospitals, have sat vacant for decades while a smaller active facility continues to operate elsewhere on the property. Ivy and mature trees have since overtaken many of the abandoned structures, whose barred windows remain a legacy of the site's original psychiatric use.

Photo taken in August 2019.