Before Kings County was taken over by New York City, it had its own asylum. The asylum, located on Flatbush
Avenue was suffering from severe overcrowding. Kings County was looking for a solution when it was noted that an
Episcopal reverend opened and ran a successful orphanage and poorhouse way out in the country on the north shore
of Suffolk County. It was also a popular therapy at the time to place patients in rural settings where they could live a
simple country life and work in farms to sustain themselves. With these things in mind Kings County opened up their
first farm colony right next to the St. Johnland orphanage. They originally used vacant farm buildings from the farm
that preceded them. The placement of patients there was a huge success and additional cottages were built and
employees sent out. Not all was perfect though as the politicians behind the project were responsible for enormous
amounts of graft, corruption and nepotisms. This led the State of New York to take over the asylum and it eventually
became known as the Kings Park State Hospital, because of the Kings County connection and the facilities park like
setting. The new state hospital inherited many of the problems of the county asylum, such as overcrowding and
understaffing. In 1889 when the state took over employees lived in the same buildings the patients did and received
low pay. The state eventually built separate housing for employees and raised salaries to help attract more staff.
Many staff members at the time were straight off the boat from Ireland or recruited from the south. To combat the
overcrowding the state kept building additional patient buildings. This didn't alleviate the problem though because
the patient population always grew quicker than the state could build. This was almost certainly the result of the
countries rapid increase in population from immigration throughout the eighteenth and early twentieth century. As
Long Island's development started to increase the state realized it better start building up rather then spread out. So,
in the midst of the WPA era building 93 was created with 11 floors for patients. After the fury of WWII research on
psychotropic medications began. By the 1950s Thorazine was in use throughout the United States. The drugs
subdued patients and made them less a danger to themselves and others. Lobotomies and electro shock therapy also
meet these needs. Advances in farming made it cheaper for the hospital to grow its own food rather than have
patients grow it so the farming was stopped. Toward the 1970s it became illegal for the hospitals to have the patients
work without pay, so many work programs were stopped. The patients now had little to do except sit in day rooms
under medication. This ushered in the concept of deinstitutionalization. Patients, at this time, were being rapidly
discharged to community based housing. Many patients would wind up living on the streets. As the patient
population dwindled the state decided to consolidate the Long Island intuitions into one at Pilgrim Psychiatric
Center. In December of 1996 the now called, Kings Park Psychiatric Center was dissolved and its remaining patients
loaded into buses and transferred to Pilgrim. Pilgrim runs 2 residences in 3 buildings on the former Kings Park
campus. The rest lies vacant.