Medical Underpass

i really dig how the composition of the shot is kind of half sky/half alley, but the walkways cut out the sky a bit. something very british about this shot...

Why do people die in insane asylums?

this is so very sad...but the mentally ill are usually very difficult to live with...VERY DIFFICULT...so it's sad for many different reasons...

If anyone cares to, check out El Peechos Pennhurst site. It contains a plethora of documented information and has an extremely graphic and depressing documentary called "Suffer The Children"

http://www.elpeecho.com/pennhurst/pennhurst.htm

Weird. The architecture (spelling right?) of the building reminds me of a level of a video game - Second Sight - where you have to invade an asylum in Vermont. Anyway. I haven't been near the medical buildings long enough to explore (with friends, and time was against us) so that stunk. But yeah, check out El Peecho's site. Good!

Particularly the 50`s strikes me as a fascist decade sometimes,nothing was allowed to flaw the "perfect" facade,which I guess was one of the reasons parents left their children at horror places like Pennhurst.I hope we have learned something since then.

Cool picture....i was just there a few days ago with people...at that very spot.

This is an unpleasant picture...it reminds me of a cattle chute in a slaughterhouse...

The story that made Geraldo Rivera famous was his expose of the Willowbrook state school on Long Island. I believe that was 1972.
As both Motts and Cecilia point out, parents with seriously handicapped children were encouraged to "put away" the child and forget about him/her.
Families often felt ashamed of having a retarded or mentally ill member, a holdover from the "eugenics" attitude prevalent in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
This attitude of "denial" continued straight through the 1950s, in spite of muckraking books, such as "Shame of the States."
From what I've read, there was a lot of talk about reforms in the professional community in the '60s, but Geraldo's "Willowbrook" report grabbed America's dirty secret and flung it right in the face of the general public. Willowbrook may have paved the way for the Pennhurst lawsuit.

Willowbrook was in Staten Island..

After reading these comments, I have decided to research ways to help those with mental disturbances with acupuncture and oriental medicine. I feel that all people need love, not isolation.

thats christmas avenue...were i party

IT'S A VERY SAD REMINDER OF THAT MEDICINE .WAS NOT PRPAIRED FOR THE KIND OF PEOPLE WHO DWELLED IN SUCH AN ABYSS OF CRUELTY, MISDIAGNOSES, AND MORE OFTEN NEGLECT. WHO ANSWERED FOR THIS INHUMAIN LIFE? THEY DID, THEY ALL DID..

Gack! =8-o

why people insist in shouting in such silent places ...

Can anyone else actually feel their brain melting after yet another one of "Littlepheret's thoughts on life"?

Can't - answer - brain - rot - setting - in . . . . . . . . .

YES WE DID...OH SORRY I THOUGHT YOU MEANT THE STAFF.

as a chiled, my sister-in-law was at Willowbrook after her parents were pushed into institutionalizing her by family doctors who said it would help her condition. she was later sent home to die but under the loving care and protection of her family she is 49 years old. my mother-in-law was instrumental in getting Bobby Kennedy and Geraldo involved after her suspicions were confirmed during regular visits to the facility.

I am a CSI student and took courses in developmental dissability.The horrified incident of Willobrookes touched me so much that when i walk in the campus , I can see those children's face.I feel their their pain,scream and suffer until death.Now its a mental torture for me.When i look around,I only see their bodies lying on ground.

=8-o

I work with some individuals who have come from Willowbrook. I just thought you might like to know that some of them now have jobs. They are happy and feel like they have a purpose. Which they do and that is to make "normal" people realize that they too are people. And they are some of the most amazing people I have ever known.

Shayela Sharmin Urme
I have the same fellings when I pass there, my parents sent my 7 year old brother to willowbrook in 1957 and died only two weeks after.

i have a feeling this place would b scary has shit at night.

I have been there 2 times. Both in the middle of the nite. A little scary, but made it through. I brought my camara and took some pics. Afterwards we found some crazy shit. A man walking from the road to a building.He was dressed in a robe that looked like he belonged in a church choire. I still have the picture on my camara chip.

Hello,

Im writing a paper on medical ethics and people with developmental disabilities and Mental illness'. I was wondering if anyone can point me in a direction where i can get some "credible" information reguarding willowbrook?

Shayela Sharmin Urme I am also a CSI student
a lot has changed, though there is still talk that the school is still haunted by the people who suffered and died, and numerous accounts of unexplainable events that occurred to people.
specially in the 5S where a little girl was kidnaped from her home and killed and buried next to the 5S building by an patient .
The 3S building was the morgue, they left the under ground unchanged, wheres there are lots of interconnecting chambers under the school where classes take part every day and the body storage freezer is also down there but I think they removed it now.

I live literally twelve feet away from CSI, the history of the site is terrifying. I live on the side of the campus where the abandon buildings still stand, and can see them from my bedroom window. After researching the school over the past few months, I am afraid of walking around alone near my house. Especially after reading of escapes and homicidle patients. At night it is very unsettling.

Above post not by me (or ~ME)
I do get the willies but usually it's from the crackheads in abandonments or crackpots who see ghosts everywhere they go.

Theda If you read this drop me a line at
goodedog1@hotmail.com
a professor interested in the history of Willowbrook

most peole thing people at willowbrook where retarted not true i was sent there at the age of 3 got out at 13 i went there docter say was retarted but when i got out went to docter he said was heard of hearing. it was not fun at all i didnt go school tell i get out of willowbrook .

Both of my parents were sent to Pennhurst insane asylum. I never knew much about the place and just started researching on it to kind of learn more about what my parents went through... They both had developmental disabilities and during those days they were looked down upon as an abomination the the community and it sadens me to know this. My parents have 4th and 2nd grade educations they dont have many book smarts but are the most compassionate people you would ever meet they get help with day to day life because they cant always do for themselves they are 70 and 62 now. but a lifetime of being looked down on is hard to overcome but they are great people. Its so sad how people were treated back then but in learning more about where they came from im beginning to find myself.

I am interested in the care and treatment of mentally ill children from about 1930 to 1960
if anybody has any info on abandoned aasylums, etc please send to mdenver3335@gmail.com Thank you

i wachted a movie about this pennhurts Insane Asylum and the treated them bad like raped and shocked them and did alot of horrible stufff anyways am try to find that movie about it i want to show it to my boy friend

i went to pennhurst 1 night ago. there are numbers of days marked on the buildings by spray paint to indicate when they are taring the buildings down. me and four of my firends went into a majority of the pennhurst mental hospital buildings we also made our way underground into the hospitals tunnel system. Creepy !!! honestly we did not see any ghost but we did here misterious sounds but we took into consideration the building in 100 sum yrs. old and it was raining the night we were there so there was alot of rain coming into pennhurst's buildings. Once we left the properity we were greeted by the police at the hidden parking spot which i parked my car in. FUCK they found us gave us each 300$ tresspassing fines and sent us on the way..

make ur way to pennhurst its a must see.. I great piece of history and a good place to blaze that bob marley peace out one love
bjp money

i just wacthed an episode of Ghost Adventures that was over the scary things at Pennhurts, and it seems pretty creepy.....but i want to go there. it looks fun.

I have a 70 year old uncle i live with now who stayed there from 1950 to 1970...when he was removed for being abused by the aids and nurses. It's sad what they did to him in there

this is bullcrap at what they do to people!!!

thorugh out cases that pennhurst was haunted. they hvae very much provein that such meditcation event were done here . i for one thing this place in hell on land

that place is so creepy with all of it's unexspalianed stuff and ghost siteings

i can't belevie how much pain people suffered there

THERE WERE ALOT OF PEOPLE THAT WERE MISTREATED THERE AND THEN THERE WERE SOME WHO WERE NOT . I MEET A WOMEN WHO LIVED THERE AND SHE SAW ALOT OF ABUSE BUT WAS NOT ABUSED TO THE EXTENDT THAT SOME OF THE PATIENTS WERE . AND YES THERE WAS ALOT OF PAIN INFLICTED MENTALLY AND PHYSICAL .

You know that the people who were put in this place were abused and chained up. I was watching a document on it and if a child was to bite someone more then twice all there teeth were taken out its a horrible discusting place.

I worked at Pennhurst in 1971, it was not a good place at all, residents were raped in the tunnel and abuse was high. I still see a few of the residents that have apartments and jobs occasionally.

what they did to those people was wrong. just because they were born with issues doesn't mean they should have been treated like animals. They would pull people's teeth out if they would bite someone. The pain will never leave the people's lives that were there. it just proves how alot of our society creates an issue with people that don't act or look like us. it's quite sad.

a few summers back i worked with a hired crew to clean the facility out so it could leveled to the ground as a graveyard and memorial for the troops. Clearly our work was for nothing seeing as it is still standing.

I went to pennhurst 1 year ago and it was CREEPY!!!!!!

I've heard so many horrible things about this place it blows my mind to an extent were i can barley think about how many lives were lost and what the people staying here had to suffer through.

I have tourrettes, add, and ocd...*gulp* do you think i would have been sent there if i was born in that time? (another thing, i'm a borderline genius, so thats another reason why they shouldn't send them there) but my grammar skills are lazy and stuff....so bcuz i have speech issues, would i have gotten raped by a staff member or would i have been sent there? O.O o.o O.o o.O thats scary, i would have eventually gone crazy! (lol there goes your future BEST astrophysicist) :P hey i have goals and dreams too! anyways, i'm pist now... >:( :U that's just sick...

I can't believe they made it into a haunted attraction for halloween. It's so wrong.

I went to the haunted house attraction there and it is so demeaning to all of the people who suffered there. I thought atleast they would have given us some history, but I gueess that was mistaken

Drove past there today....I read alot about the history . It is truly heart breaking to know it's past. If people knew, I could only hope they would hold reverence for the souls that had their lives stolen rather than just having an adventure of creeping themselves out.