Photo's taken in 2004 Music : Journeys / Mike Turcotte ( Copyright MTM 2023 )
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia ------------------------------------------------------------------
Pilgrim Psychiatric Center, formerly known as Pilgrim State Hospital, is a state-run psychiatric hospital located in Brentwood, New York. Nine months after its official opening in 1931, the hospital's patient population was 2,018. At its peak in 1954, Pilgrim State Hospital[2] could claim to be the largest mental hospital in the U.S., with 13,875 patients.[3] Its size has never been exceeded by any other facility, though it is now far smaller than it once was.
History
Aerial view of the hospital in 1938 By 1900 overcrowding in New York City's psychiatric asylums had become a serious problem. There were several strategies implemented to deal with the escalating patient overload. One was to put the patients to work, farming in a relaxed setting on what was then rural Long Island. The new state hospitals were dubbed "farm colonies" because of their live-and-work treatment programs and emphasis on agriculture. However, these farm colonies, Kings Park State Hospital, (later named Kings Park Psychiatric Center) and Central Islip State Hospital (later named Central Islip Psychiatric Center), became overcrowded, like the institutions they were meant to replace.
New York State began making plans for a third farm colony, which was to become Pilgrim State Hospital, named in honor of the former New York State Commissioner of Mental Health, Charles W. Pilgrim. The state bought approximately 1,000 acres (400 ha) of land in Brentwood and began construction on the hospital in 1929. Pilgrim State Hospital opened on October 1, 1931, as a close-knit community with its own police and fire department, courts, post office, a LIRR station, power plant, swine farm, church, cemetery and water tower, as well as houses for staff and administrators. A series of tunnels were used for routing utilities. Each set of buildings were known as quads, a pattern of four buildings situated around a center building, where the kitchen was located.
The hospital continued to grow as the patient population increased greatly. Eventually, the state of New York bought up more land to the southwest of the facility to construct Edgewood State Hospital, a short-lived facility that was a subsidiary of Pilgrim State Hospital. In fact, Pilgrim State Hospital was so large that it reached into four Suffolk towns: Huntington, Babylon, Smithtown and Islip, and had two state roads passing through its grounds.
Death of the "Farm Colonies" As psychiatric medication and community care became an increasingly viable alternative to institutionalization, large mental institutions began to decline. Edgewood, the last psychiatric hospital to be built on Long Island, closed its doors in December 1971, following decentralization. Kings Park and Central Islip remained open, while slowly downsizing. During this time Pilgrim was
