Kirkbride Buildings - Historic Insane Asylum Architecture

Since the forum receives so little traffic, I thought it might be a good idea to point out a recent series of posts by someone who spent several years at Traverse City State Hospital. Ronl, became a resident of the hospital in 1965 when he was 12 years old, and his memories (both good and bad) make for fascinating reading.

You can find them here: Forgotten Children – Hall 18, Hall 17.

Fox’s hit television series “House” is currently shooting at the former Greystone Park State Hospital according to this article on NJ.com: TV Show “House” to Film at Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital. It sounds like the production is trying to keep things under wraps for now, so there’s not much information other than that the hospital will “play” the fictional Mayfield Psychiatric Hospital on the show.

Unfortunately, scenes from Greystone probably won’t appear on the program until next season. Also, the area will be closed to the public while filming takes place. I won’t be surprised if a few Greystone “regulars” manage to do a little spying though:) Not that I recommend or endorse such things mind you.

Another little interesting tidbit from that article is that a movie titled Marvin’s Room was filmed at Greystone Park. I wasn’t aware of that and will have to check it out to see what kind of footage of the hospital it has.

According to a write-up on Preservation New Jersey’s blog, the state’s governor, Jon Corzine, has stated that he favors demolition of the Greystone Kirkbride: Governor Corzine Apparently Favors Demolition of Greystone. While the governor doesn’t have final say on what happens to Greystone, the office does have a lot of power and I’m sure Corzine could have a strong influence on the fate of the building if he wanted to. Not being from NJ, I don’t really know much about Corzine or how much he’s involved with the future of the former hospital campus. Maybe someone from NJ could chime in about that?

I also can’t help but mention that while reading Preservation NJ’s blog’s post and another article about the hospital by the same, I was surprised by the appearance of my Greystone admin photo (without any acknowledgment of its source to boot). It’s been a continuing annoyance since I started KB.com that some people believe that if a picture is online, that means it’s somehow in the public domain and they can do whatever they want with it. In this case, the people using my picture are working to preserve a building I also want saved, so I’m not going to do anything about it (except write this whiney post;). Luckily not too long ago I decided to watermark my online photos with a copyright declaration. It’s something I strongly recommend to anybody posting photos online.