New York State carries 1,247 documented abandoned places on the Urbex Maps atlas -- more than any other state east of the Mississippi. That number reflects a geography of extremes: one of the world's greatest cities packed into a narrow island at the state's southern tip, and several hundred miles of post-industrial cities, Catskill Mountains hollows, Adirondack ghost settlements, and Long Island institutional campuses stretching north and west. Abandoned psychiatric hospitals alone account for dozens of entries -- New York built its mental health infrastructure on a massive scale in the late 19th century, and when deinstitutionalization swept through in the 1970s and 1980s, it left behind enormous Kirkbride buildings, cottage-plan campuses, and waterfront sanatoriums that the state has struggled to redevelop or demolish ever since. The result is a concentration of large-scale institutional ruins that has no parallel elsewhere in the United States.
Beyond the asylums, New York's urbex geography includes the ruins of the Borscht Belt resort economy that collapsed when the Catskill hotel industry died after 1970, a scattering of Adirondack ghost towns left by the iron ore and tanning industries of the 19th century, the fortified island arsenal on the Hudson River, a Cold War-era radar station on the eastern tip of Long Island, and the terminal buildings of Buffalo's once-great rail network. Each of these represents a distinct chapter in New York's economic and social history -- the Jewish resort culture of the Catskills, the rise and fall of upstate manufacturing, the ambitions and failures of the state's mental health system. The state's sheer scale means that genuinely remote abandoned places exist alongside sites that are visible from commuter rail lines.
This guide covers 10 of the most iconic abandoned places in New York State, from the Long Island Sound shore to the Adirondack interior. Every spot has free GPS coordinates on the Urbex Maps interactive atlas, a YouTube video, historical depth, and access notes.
Free urbex GPS: how Urbex Maps works
Every spot in this guide has a free GPS pin on the Urbex Maps interactive atlas. No account required for these 10 -- just open coordinates on an interactive map with satellite imagery and access notes. The full New York database has 1,247 documented locations and is updated regularly, covering everything from Long Island institutional ruins to Adirondack ghost towns and Buffalo's industrial core.
1. Kings Park Psychiatric Center, Kings Park
Kings Park Psychiatric Center on Long Island is the most visited abandoned building in New York State -- a 13-story Art Deco tower known as Building 93, surrounded by dozens of smaller structures across a 900-acre campus that opened in 1885 and closed in 1996. At its peak in the 1950s, the institution held 9,303 patients, making it one of the largest psychiatric facilities in the world. The scale of the campus -- 150 buildings, its own railroad spur, farms, bakeries, and power plant -- reflects the era when New York believed that the solution to mental illness was total removal from society into self-contained therapeutic communities.
The hospital opened as the Long Island State Hospital Farm, one of a series of farm colonies designed to move overcrowded patients out of Manhattan's Blackwell Island asylum. The farming model was quickly abandoned as patient populations grew beyond any agricultural capacity, and Kings Park became a conventional custodial institution growing ever larger through the first half of the 20th century. Building 93, completed in 1939 in a stripped Art Deco style, was the centerpiece of an expansion intended to bring the campus up to modern standards. It never fully served its intended function before deinstitutionalization began reversing the patient census in the 1970s. By 1996, when the state closed Kings Park entirely, most of the campus had already been emptied for years.
Today the campus is operated as Nissequogue River State Park, with the grounds open to the public and the buildings closed but accessible to determined visitors. Building 93 dominates the landscape with its distinctive setback tower visible for miles. The surrounding smaller ward buildings, power plant, and farm structures decay at varying rates across the wooded campus. Kings Park is also featured in our 50 States, 50 Iconic Urbex Spots guide.
2. North Brother Island, East River NYC
North Brother Island sits in the East River between the Bronx and Rikers Island -- 20 acres of ruins and forest accessible only by boat and closed to the public since 1963, making it one of the most genuinely inaccessible abandoned places in New York City. The island's history is inseparable from two of the most dramatic stories in American public health: the 1904 General Slocum disaster, in which more than 1,021 people drowned when the excursion steamer burned in the East River with the passengers deposited on North Brother's shore, and the involuntary isolation of Mary Mallon ("Typhoid Mary"), the Irish-born cook who was detained on the island from 1907 to 1910 and again from 1915 until her death there in 1938.
Riverside Hospital, the tuberculosis sanatorium that occupied the island from 1885 onward, grew into a campus of a dozen buildings by the early 20th century. After World War II the island was briefly used as emergency housing for returning veterans and their families, and from 1952 to 1963 it housed a drug rehabilitation program. The program closed in 1963 amid scandal and overcrowding, and the island has been closed to the public ever since. The New York City Department of Parks manages it as a heron rookery.
The brick hospital buildings still stand across the island, their walls cracked by decades of root growth from the trees that have colonized every path and courtyard. The nurses' residence, the main hospital pavilion, and several outbuildings are visible from the water. Guided access is occasionally granted for researchers and journalists; unauthorized access requires a boat and significant determination. The island is genuinely dangerous -- the buildings are structurally compromised and the grounds are managed for nesting birds, not human visitors.
3. Bannerman's Castle (Arsenal), Pollepel Island
Bannerman's Castle on Pollepel Island is one of the most romantically sited ruins in the eastern United States -- a Scottish Baronial-style military surplus warehouse built by arms dealer Francis Bannerman VI starting in 1901, rising improbably from a small island in the middle of the Hudson River near Beacon, New York. Bannerman was the largest dealer in surplus military equipment in the United States after the Spanish-American War of 1898, and he purchased Pollepel Island to store the enormous inventory of rifles, cannons, ammunition, and uniforms he had bought from the US government. The castle design was his own romantic invention, with towers, battlements, and the name "Bannerman's Island Arsenal" spelled out in large letters on the river facade.
The arsenal was already partially ruined by the time of Francis Bannerman's death in 1918. A 1920 explosion of stored ammunition destroyed the powder house and damaged surrounding buildings. The Bannerman family sold the island to New York State in 1967, and a fire in 1969 gutted the main warehouse building, leaving the roofless shell that visitors see today. The island was subsequently transferred to the Bannerman Castle Trust, which has been stabilizing and partially restoring the ruins since the early 2000s.
Access is by kayak or by guided boat tours operated seasonally by the Bannerman Castle Trust from Beacon or Cold Spring. The tours land on the island and allow visitors to walk through the ruins with guides. The island is not accessible independently without a boat; the Hudson River current at this point is strong and the crossing requires experience. The ruins themselves are genuinely dramatic -- the collapsed walls, overgrown courtyards, and the stone facade overlooking the river make Bannerman's Island one of the most photographed abandoned places in New York.
4. Grossinger's Resort (Borscht Belt), Liberty
Grossinger's Catskill Resort Hotel in Liberty, Sullivan County, was the defining institution of the Borscht Belt -- the network of Jewish summer resorts in the Catskill Mountains that served as the cultural center of American Jewish life from the 1920s through the 1970s. At its peak, Grossinger's covered 1,200 acres with a private airstrip, 35 buildings, two swimming pools, a golf course, an ice skating rink, and accommodations for 1,500 guests. The comedians, singers, and entertainers who built their careers performing at Grossinger's and its Borscht Belt neighbors -- Jerry Seinfeld, Joan Rivers, Don Rickles, Rodney Dangerfield -- defined American popular comedy for two generations.
The resort was founded by Selig and Malke Grossinger, Jewish immigrants from Austria-Hungary who bought a small farm in Liberty in 1914 and began taking in boarders. Their daughter Jennie Grossinger transformed the small boarding house into a national institution through relentless promotion and personal warmth; she entertained celebrities including Rocky Marciano (who trained at the resort) and Eddie Fisher (who honeymooned there with Debbie Reynolds). Jennie Grossinger died in 1972, and the resort never fully recovered from her absence. The Catskill resort economy collapsed as American Jews moved to Florida and the Caribbean for vacations; Grossinger's closed in 1986.
The complex sat largely intact through the 1990s and 2000s, becoming one of the most widely visited abandoned resorts in the United States. Urbex photographers documented the swimming pool, the hotel lobby, the boxing training facility, and dozens of other spaces in extraordinary detail before demolition of most structures began around 2018. Significant portions of the complex have now been cleared for a residential development, but the site remains on the Urbex Maps atlas with GPS coordinates reflecting the surviving structures.
5. Letchworth Village, Thiells
Letchworth Village in Thiells, Rockland County, opened in 1911 as a model institution for people with intellectual disabilities, designed on the cottage plan that reformers believed was more humane than the massive dormitory asylums of the previous generation. The campus spread across 2,388 acres with more than 130 buildings, its own farm, bakery, and powerhouse. Within three decades it had become exactly what its founders hoped to prevent -- an overcrowded, understaffed institution where patients suffered severe neglect and abuse.
The site is historically significant for two reasons that define different chapters of American medical ethics. In 1950, Dr. Hilary Koprowski administered the world's first successful oral polio vaccine trial to 20 children at Letchworth Village, a test conducted without informed consent from the patients or their families that nonetheless produced the research that eventually led to widespread polio vaccination. Two decades later, journalist Geraldo Rivera filmed an undercover exposé at Letchworth in 1972 for WABC-TV that shocked the country with footage of naked, unattended residents lying in their own waste -- a broadcast that directly accelerated New York's deinstitutionalization movement and contributed to federal disability rights legislation.
Letchworth Village closed in 1996. The campus in Thiells was sold to Rockland County, which has converted some buildings for county government use while leaving dozens of the original cottage-plan structures to decay. The surviving abandoned buildings -- patient dormitories, the power plant, maintenance facilities -- are among the most intact examples of early 20th-century institutional architecture in New York State. Access to the grounds is through adjacent Harriman State Park trails; the buildings themselves are closed.
6. Buffalo Central Terminal, Buffalo
Buffalo Central Terminal opened on June 22, 1929, the grandest train station in upstate New York and a declaration of faith in Buffalo's economic future at the exact moment the Great Depression was about to destroy it. The terminal was designed by the firm Fellheimer and Wagner in the Art Deco style: a 271-foot office tower rising above a 15-story concourse building, with a main waiting room of extraordinary proportions -- 225 feet long, 65 feet wide, 61 feet high -- finished in polychrome terra cotta, marble, and decorative ironwork. The station served the New York Central Railroad and the connecting lines that made Buffalo a major interchange point in the national rail network.
Buffalo's postwar decline came faster and harder than almost any other American city. The population peaked at 580,000 in 1950 and has fallen by more than half since. The railroads that had built the terminal lost their passenger business to airlines and highways; New York Central merged with Pennsylvania Railroad in 1968 to form Penn Central, which went bankrupt in 1970. The last train left Buffalo Central Terminal on October 28, 1979. The building has been vacant ever since -- 46 years and counting as of 2026.
The Buffalo Central Terminal Restoration Corporation has been working to stabilize and eventually reuse the building since 1997. Significant structural work has been completed on the exterior, and the building has been opened for occasional public tours and events. The interior retains extraordinary fragments of its original decoration -- decorative tile floors, the remnants of the ornamental metalwork, the bones of the great waiting room -- alongside the industrial decay of four and a half decades of exposure. It is one of the most important abandoned buildings in the United States both for its architectural quality and for what it represents about Buffalo's 20th-century trajectory.
7. Glenwood Power Station (Yonkers Power Station), Yonkers
The Glenwood Power Station in Yonkers -- sometimes called the Greystone Power Station -- stands on the Hudson River shore as one of the finest examples of industrial Gothic architecture in the United States. Built between 1904 and 1906 for the New York Central Railroad to power its newly electrified Hudson River commuter rail line, the station was designed in a Romanesque Revival style with Flemish bond brickwork, arched windows, and decorative corbeling that gives it the appearance of a medieval cathedral rather than a power plant. The building is 375 feet long with a turbine hall of cathedral-like proportions.
The station powered the third-rail electrification of the New York Central's Hudson Division, which the railroad was converting from steam as it prepared to run trains into the new Grand Central Terminal in Manhattan. It operated through the mid-20th century before being decommissioned, and has been vacant and deteriorating since. The Hudson River waterfront setting -- with the Palisades visible across the river and the Tappan Zee Bridge visible to the north -- makes it one of the most dramatically sited industrial ruins on the East Coast.
The building is on the Yonkers waterfront, technically private property, and has been the subject of various redevelopment proposals for three decades without any reaching completion. The exterior is visible from the Hudson River and from the Metro-North rail line that runs along the shore; the interior is inaccessible without trespassing. Its Romanesque towers and arched windows are visible from passing commuter trains, making Glenwood one of the few major urbex sites that thousands of New Yorkers unknowingly pass every day.
8. Camp Hero, Montauk
Camp Hero at Montauk Point, the eastern tip of Long Island, is an Air Force radar station that operated from 1942 to 1981 and is now partially open to the public as Camp Hero State Park -- with several key facilities still closed and slowly decaying. The site's history begins with a World War II coastal artillery installation designed to defend New York Harbor from naval attack; the gun batteries were camouflaged to resemble a New England fishing village, with fake storefronts and pitched roofs painted on the bunker facades. The Cold War brought the SAGE (Semi-Automatic Ground Environment) air defense radar system to Montauk, and the massive AN/FPS-35 radar antenna -- still standing -- became the dominant landmark of the site.
Camp Hero entered popular culture through Stranger Things, the Netflix series whose original concept was set at Montauk and drew on the Montauk Project conspiracy theories that circulated about the base from the 1980s onward. The theories alleged that secret government experiments in time travel, mind control, and extraterrestrial contact were conducted in the underground facilities after the base's official closure. No credible evidence supports these claims, but they have made Camp Hero one of the most searched abandoned sites in New York.
The state park encompasses the visible above-ground structures: the radar antenna, the operations building, several support structures, and the World War II gun battery emplacements. The underground facilities are closed. The SAGE radar building and the bunkers are in various states of deterioration. The Montauk Point Lighthouse -- operational since 1797 -- is at the adjacent state park and is open to visitors. Camp Hero's combination of Cold War infrastructure, WWII coastal fortifications, and conspiracy lore makes it one of the most intellectually layered abandoned sites in the state.
9. Satterly Hill Ghost Town, Adirondacks
The Adirondack Mountains of northern New York are scattered with ghost towns and abandoned settlements from the 19th century -- communities that grew around iron ore furnaces, tanneries, and lumber operations, and vanished when those industries failed or the forests were exhausted. Satterly Hill in Hamilton County is among the most remote of these, a farming and logging community established in the early 19th century that was abandoned by the 1870s when the thin Adirondack soils proved inadequate for sustained agriculture. What remains is the characteristic Adirondack ghost-town landscape: stone cellar holes, overgrown orchard trees, and the faint lines of old roads through second-growth forest.
The Adirondack ghost town phenomenon is distinct from the Western mining ghost town -- these are not one-generation boom-bust camps but genuine farming communities that settlers tried to establish in marginal terrain. The same pattern of initial optimism and eventual abandonment played out across dozens of Hamilton, Herkimer, and Essex County towns in the mid-19th century, as the rocky, thin-soiled uplands that looked like farmland to eyes accustomed to New England proved unable to support families long-term. Many of these communities survived just long enough to build churches, schools, and substantial farmhouses before the soil gave out and the population dispersed.
Access to Satterly Hill requires navigation through Adirondack Park state land -- the area is on or near the Forever Wild state forest preserve, and the old roads that served the settlement have long since reverted to forest. The location is remote enough to require a full-day hike from the nearest trailhead. Navigation via GPS is essential; the cellar holes and stone walls are the only markers in a heavily forested landscape. This is a site for experienced Adirondack backcountry travelers, not casual day-trippers. Topo maps and a compass are recommended in addition to GPS.
10. Hudson River State Hospital, Poughkeepsie
Hudson River State Hospital in Poughkeepsie is the finest surviving example of the Kirkbride Plan asylum in New York State -- a Victorian Gothic complex designed by architect Frederic Clarke Withers and opened in 1871 on a bluff above the Hudson River, built on the therapeutic principles of psychiatrist Thomas Story Kirkbride, who believed that a carefully designed building in a park-like setting was itself curative. The main building stretches 680 feet in a bat-wing plan, with a central administration block flanked by progressively lower ward wings stepping down in height to create the graduated hierarchy Kirkbride specified. It is one of the most architecturally accomplished institutional buildings of the 19th century in the United States.
The hospital opened for patients in 1871 and operated continuously for 132 years, closing in 2003. In that time it grew from Withers's elegant Victorian structure into a sprawling campus of later additions -- nurses' residences, patient cottages, a modern treatment building, an infirmary -- that surrounded and eventually overwhelmed the original Kirkbride building. At peak capacity the institution held several thousand patients. Deinstitutionalization reduced the census steadily from the 1970s onward until closure became financially inevitable.
The campus has been partially redeveloped as the Hudson Heritage mixed-use development, with apartments and commercial spaces in some of the later 20th-century buildings. The original Kirkbride building, however, remains vacant and in serious deterioration. Its Victorian Gothic facade -- red brick, slate roofs, towers, and ornate dormers -- is partially obscured by vegetation and partially stabilized, but major portions of the interior have collapsed. The building is on the National Register of Historic Places and is considered one of the most important endangered historic structures in New York State.
FAQ
Is it legal to enter Kings Park Psychiatric Center?
The grounds of Nissequogue River State Park, which encompasses the Kings Park campus, are open to the public. The buildings themselves are closed and entry is prohibited -- trespassing in the buildings is a violation of state park rules and can result in arrest. Many visitors walk the grounds legally and photograph the exteriors. The buildings are structurally dangerous and contain asbestos and other hazardous materials.
Can you visit North Brother Island?
North Brother Island is closed to the public and managed as a bird sanctuary by the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation. Unauthorized access by boat is technically possible but constitutes trespassing and disturbs the nesting bird colonies the island is managed to protect. Occasional authorized access is granted to researchers and journalists through the Parks Department.
Is Bannerman's Island accessible to tourists?
Yes, through guided boat tours operated seasonally by the Bannerman Castle Trust from Beacon and Cold Spring. Tours typically run May through October, weather permitting, and land on the island with a guide. Kayak access is also possible for experienced paddlers; the Hudson River current at this point is strong. Tour tickets should be booked in advance through the Bannerman Castle Trust website.
What happened to Grossinger's Resort?
Grossinger's closed in 1986 after the collapse of the Catskill resort economy. The property sat abandoned for decades and became one of the most photographed urbex sites in the country. Demolition of most buildings began around 2018 for a residential development. The famous indoor pool was demolished; some structures remain. The site is documented extensively in photography books and documentaries about the Borscht Belt era.
Is Buffalo Central Terminal open to visitors?
The Buffalo Central Terminal Restoration Corporation occasionally opens the building for public tours and events, particularly during the summer months. Check their website for current schedules. The exterior is always visible from the street and from passing Metro-North trains. The interior is not accessible independently; all legal access is through organized tours.
What is the Montauk Project conspiracy theory?
The Montauk Project is a set of conspiracy theories claiming that secret government experiments in mind control, time travel, and extraterrestrial contact were conducted at Camp Hero after its 1981 closure. The theories were popularized in a book series by Preston Nichols beginning in 1992 and influenced the backstory of Stranger Things. No credible evidence supports any of the claims, and the underground facilities at Camp Hero are simply abandoned Cold War infrastructure.
Conclusion
New York State's 1,247 documented abandoned places span every type of urbex landscape: institutional ruins of extraordinary architectural quality, ghost towns preserved by forest and distance, industrial relics of the railroad and manufacturing eras, and Cold War military installations with layers of classified and conspiratorial history. The sites in this guide are starting points. Every county in New York has its own inventory of abandoned structures -- the Catskills alone could fill a separate guide -- and the Urbex Maps atlas adds new verified locations regularly. Free GPS coordinates for all 10 sites are on the interactive atlas. Bring a camera, check conditions before you go, and respect access rules. What New York left behind deserves better than accidental destruction.
Explore more abandoned places in the US
- ●Abandoned Places in Pennsylvania: 10 Iconic Urbex Spots
- ●Abandoned Places in New Jersey: 10 Iconic Urbex Spots
- ●Abandoned Places in Michigan: 10 Iconic Urbex Spots
- ●Abandoned Places in Indiana: 10 Iconic Urbex Spots
- ●Abandoned Places in Ohio: 10 Iconic Urbex Spots
- ●Ghost Towns USA: 20 Iconic Places
- ●Abandoned Places USA: 50 States, 50 Iconic Urbex Spots
