No category of abandoned building carries more weight than the psychiatric hospital. These were places built to contain suffering, and the architecture reflects that purpose. Thick walls, barred windows, locked wards, and underground tunnel systems designed so patients could be moved without being seen. The institutions that occupied them practiced treatments that sound barbaric today: ice water baths, insulin shock therapy, electroconvulsive treatment without anesthesia, and tens of thousands of lobotomies. When the deinstitutionalization movement emptied these hospitals starting in the 1960s, it left behind massive campuses that nobody wanted and nobody could afford to demolish. Here are five abandoned psychiatric hospitals across five states, each one a monument to a chapter of American history that the country would rather forget.
1. Danvers State Hospital, Massachusetts
Danvers State Hospital is the abandoned asylum that changed American pop culture. Built in 1874 under the supervision of architect Nathaniel Jeremiah Bradlee, the facility opened in 1878 on Hathorne Hill in Danvers, a town north of Boston with deep connections to the 1692 Salem witch trials. The hospital was designed according to the Kirkbride Plan, an influential 19th-century approach that called for a bat-wing floor plan intended to maximize natural light and ventilation as part of the therapeutic environment.
At its peak, the hospital housed over 2,000 patients in a building designed for 600. The overcrowding led to predictable horrors: patients crammed into hallways, understaffed wards, and the steady adoption of expedient treatments including lobotomies and electroshock therapy. An elaborate labyrinth of underground tunnels connected the buildings, originally designed for patient transport during harsh New England winters but later gaining a sinister reputation.
The hospital closed permanently in 1992. For the next 15 years, the empty complex attracted a steady stream of urban explorers, ghost hunters, and filmmakers. The 2001 horror film "Session 9," shot entirely on location at Danvers, brought the building to mainstream attention. Literary historians believe H.P. Lovecraft used the institution as inspiration for the Arkham Sanitarium in his fiction, which in turn inspired Batman's Arkham Asylum.
Despite being listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1984, most of the complex was demolished in 2007 to make way for luxury apartments. Only the Kirkbride building's central administration section was incorporated into the new development. The demolition was controversial, but the photographs and films made during the building's 15 years of abandonment ensure Danvers State Hospital remains the most documented abandoned asylum in American history.
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2. Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital, New Jersey
When Greystone Park opened on August 17, 1876, as the New Jersey State Lunatic Asylum at Morristown, its main building had the largest footprint of any building in the United States. That record held until the Pentagon was completed in the 1940s. Officially renamed Greystone Park in 1924, the Kirkbride-plan hospital was designed to house 600 patients and eventually held over 7,500, making it a warehouse for human suffering disguised as a medical facility.
The campus sprawled across hundreds of acres in Morris Plains, New Jersey, and included not just the massive main building but also an entire self-contained village: a factory, a hospital within the hospital, a morgue, staff housing, farmland, and workshops. Patients were expected to work, and the asylum functioned as a largely closed economy. Treatments evolved from the relatively benign (rest, fresh air, farm labor) to the brutal (hydrotherapy, insulin coma therapy, lobotomy) as overcrowding made individualized care impossible.
Greystone's patient population began declining in the 1960s as the deinstitutionalization movement gained momentum. A new, smaller psychiatric facility was built on the grounds in 2008, and the original Kirkbride building was demolished in 2015. But the surrounding campus buildings, including the factory, morgue, and several residential structures, remained abandoned and accessible to explorers for years.
The demolition of the main building was bitterly contested by preservationists who saw it as an irreplaceable example of Kirkbride architecture. Urban explorers who documented the interior before demolition found patient records scattered on floors, medical equipment in treatment rooms, and personal belongings in wards, evidence of departures so hasty that nobody bothered to clean up.
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3. Kings Park Psychiatric Center, New York
Kings Park Psychiatric Center occupies a sprawling campus in the hamlet of Kings Park on Long Island's North Shore, within what is now Nissequogue River State Park. Opened in 1885 as the Kings County Farm, the facility grew over the following decades into one of the largest psychiatric institutions in the United States. At its peak in 1954, Kings Park treated over 10,000 patients, making it the biggest institution of its kind at the time.
The most recognizable structure is Building 93, a 13-story brick and concrete tower built from 1939 to 1941 with Works Progress Administration funding. Designed by state architect William E. Haugaard as an infirmary for chronic and geriatric patients, Building 93 is often called the most famous asylum building on Long Island. It closed from the top floors down as patient numbers declined, and urban explorers who've entered have found entire floors of abandoned hospital beds stacked in the basement, a sight that's become one of the most widely shared images in the urbex community.
Kings Park closed in 1996 as New York continued to move away from institutional psychiatric care. The buildings have remained standing because they sit within a state park, making demolition politically and logistically complicated. The campus includes dozens of structures in various states of decay, from relatively intact administrative buildings to ward buildings with collapsed roofs and floors.
Entering the abandoned buildings is illegal and actively enforced by local police. Despite this, Kings Park remains one of the most frequently explored abandoned sites on the East Coast, with extensive documentation available online.
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4. Central State Hospital, Georgia
Central State Hospital in Milledgeville, Georgia, was once the largest psychiatric institution in the world. Opened in 1842 as the "State Lunatic, Idiot, and Epileptic Asylum" (the name alone tells you something about the era), the facility is located about two hours southeast of Atlanta and grew over the following century into a campus of over 200 buildings spread across 2,000 acres.
At its peak in the 1960s, Central State housed more than 12,000 patients, a population larger than many Georgia towns. The facility was virtually a self-contained city, with its own dairy farm, fire department, cemetery, and power plant. Patients who died at Central State were often buried in unmarked graves on the grounds. An estimated 25,000 such graves exist, making the hospital cemetery one of the largest in the state.
Deinstitutionalization began emptying Central State in the 1960s and 1970s, but the facility limped along for decades. The final patients were transferred out in 2010, leaving the entire campus abandoned. The majority of the 200 buildings are boarded up and at risk of collapse. Security patrols attempt to keep out urban explorers, but the campus is simply too large to effectively monitor.
Explorers who've documented the interior have found ward buildings with beds still in place, medical equipment in examination rooms, administrative offices with files and paperwork, and the industrial kitchen that once prepared meals for over 10,000 people daily. The scale is overwhelming: walking the grounds takes hours, and every building contains its own collection of artifacts from over a century of institutional psychiatry.
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5. Norwich State Hospital, Connecticut
Norwich State Hospital opened in October 1904 as the Norwich State Hospital for the Insane, serving eastern Connecticut from a campus that eventually grew to more than 30 buildings spread across hundreds of acres. By mid-century, the hospital held over 3,000 patients, connected by a warren of underground tunnels linking wards, a powerhouse, a theater, staff housing, and workshops into a self-contained world.
The facility's architectural centerpiece was its main administration building, a stately brick structure that gave no hint of what occurred inside. Like most state hospitals of its era, Norwich practiced the full range of mid-century psychiatric treatments: hydrotherapy, electroconvulsive therapy, and lobotomy. Patient testimonies and investigative reports from the 1960s and 1970s documented overcrowding, unsanitary conditions, and inadequate staffing.
The hospital was closed on October 10, 1996, and the buildings were left standing. For the next two decades, the campus became one of the premier urbex destinations in New England. Explorers documented bowling alleys, a theater with seats still intact, medical wards with equipment in place, and the tunnel system that connected everything underground. The tunnels, dark and partially flooded, became the most talked-about feature in online urbex communities.
The property is now owned by the Mohegan Tribe, which has plans for redevelopment. Demolition of several buildings has already occurred, and trespassing is strictly prohibited. Security patrols the grounds regularly, and the penalties for unauthorized entry are enforced.
But the documentation created during the hospital's two decades of accessibility ensures it remains one of the best-recorded abandoned hospitals in the country. The sheer volume of photographs, videos, and written accounts from explorers who visited between 1996 and the mid-2010s constitutes a comprehensive visual archive of institutional decay.
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Beyond the List
Every state in the country has at least one abandoned psychiatric facility. Some of the most notable that didn't make this list include Pennhurst State School in Pennsylvania, Pilgrim State Hospital on Long Island, Letchworth Village in New York, and the sprawling campus of Central Islip State Hospital. The history of institutional psychiatry in the United States is dark, complicated, and extensively documented. Our interactive map includes psychiatric hospitals, asylums, and related facilities across all 50 states for those who want to explore further.
Related reads: - Abandoned Schools in America: 5 Forgotten Campuses - Abandoned Churches in America: 5 Forgotten Houses of Worship - Ghost Towns in America: 5 Haunting Abandoned Towns - Abandoned Factories in America: 5 Industrial Ruins - Explore all abandoned places in the United States on our interactive map →
