Peeling Paint on Wall Bracket, Kings Park Psychiatric Center

Kings Park Psychiatric Center opened in 1885 as the Kings County Asylum for Insane and grew into a self-sufficient village of more than 150 buildings on the north shore of Long Island. At its peak in the 1950s the hospital housed close to 9,000 patients, treated largely in isolation from New York City. Deinstitutionalization policies and the shift toward outpatient care led to a steady decline in population, and the facility closed in 1996. Many of its structures, left unheated and unmaintained for decades, now show the effects of that neglect in cracked plaster and peeling layers of paint on walls, trim, and built-in fixtures.

Photo taken in September 2008.