The Hospital on the Hill

During grad school, I trained at the remains of a vast psychiatric hospital in upstate New York. When I was there, in the early 2000s, only two buildings were still in use, housing about 200 patients. The rest of the campus was a ghost town at the top of a hill.

In its heyday, more than 3,400 patients lived there, cared for by 1,200 staff. It had been designed as a self-sufficient city, with farms, workshops, a bakery, and even a bandstand for concerts. A world unto itself.

At lunch in the summertime, I’d sometimes walk the old roads. It was beautiful but eerie. About a hundred buildings stood empty, in permanent disrepair. Long wards with dark hallways. Loading docks with nothing to load.

I don’t know how many people were ever happy there. Many were likely not free to leave.

But walking those roads in the summer, it was impossible not to feel that society could gather its most vulnerable people in one place and try, however imperfectly, to care for them.