The Fractured Haven
This
decaying collection of buildings was at one time an asylum complex
for children. Built on a heavily wooded patch of land, the center was
considered state of the art at the time of its opening in 1925.
However, not long afterword it began to fall into a shameful state of
existence. Numerous accounts of patient abuse were reported, and
an ever declining state of repair of the buildings and grounds put
the asylum into a downward spiral that it could not come out of. In
1991 its doors were finally forced shut for good, as per a direct
order handed down by a federal court. The pain that the facility had
wrought while operating was a lingering one though, and even after
the campus was left abandoned class-action lawsuits continued to be
filed against the former hospital.
The
campus still festers today. Crumbling facades conceal away dark
hallways which bow and twist from decades of neglect. The hospital
windows are now little more that scattered shard of broken glass, and
a carpet of medical records decorates the floor of the
administrations building, left long ago during the facility's
closing. Many of the walls here are painted with cheerful, colorful
scenes. As lighthearted as these paintings may be, knowing the
asylum's history, and the abuses that the characters in these
paintings bore witness to, makes them almost seem as if they are
keeping secrets. They stare out at you from their walls as you pass,
and slowly sink back into the gloom as the glow of your flashlight
travels further down the hall.
 |
Dress forms stand in the decaying laundry building.
Rusting cribs serve as reminders to just how young some of the patients here were.
A small three-tier morgue rots away in the basement of the administrative building.
