Tree-Filled Courtyard at Kings Park Psychiatric Center

Kings Park Psychiatric Center opened in 1885 as the Kings Park State Hospital, growing over the following decades into a sprawling campus of dozens of brick ward buildings connected by tunnels and courtyards on Long Island's north shore. At its peak in the 1950s the facility housed more than 9,000 patients and operated largely as a self-sufficient farm colony, with its own power plant, railroad spur, and agricultural fields. Deinstitutionalization and changing standards of psychiatric care led New York State to close the hospital in phases, with the last buildings vacated by 1996. Many of the remaining structures have sat sealed with plywood and steel since closure, awaiting redevelopment plans that have repeatedly stalled amid the site's asbestos and structural hazards.