I know that is probably the weirdest blog post title ever but it’s 100% true, I really did have picnics with my mom and brother outside an abandoned psychiatric hospital one summer. Here’s how it happened. In the summer of 2002 my mom had me and my two siblings signed up for swimming lessons at our local recreation center. The rec center had a big indoor swimming pool, a game room with table top games such as air hockey and ping pong, a playroom with toys, a workout room and a gym with basketball hoops. The city hall was also located inside the rec center. Attached to the beautiful community center was a huge reddish brown and beige sandstone brick building that looked to have hundreds of small windows and pretty much stretched around to the other side of the property. But this massive building was not part of the rec center it was attached to, it was a psychiatric hospital that had been abandoned since the early 90s. So why the heck was there some old psychiatric hospital attached to a fully functioning recreation center? Let me explain. The entire recreation center property opened as a Veterans Administration hospital in 1939. During the war it provided medical care to veterans. Later the building was used as a hospital to treat tuberculosis patients and a new wing was built to accommodate the growing number of patients. In the 1960s when antibiotics became available to treat tuberculosis a hospital to treat the disease was no longer needed. So the building was then converted into a psychiatric institution for people with mental, developmental and physical disabilities. The facility remained open until the early 90s when it was closed down and its last patients were moved into group homes. The building was then abandoned and lots of old equipment and drugs were left inside. Finally in 1995 a small portion of the building that was originally used as an activities building for the psychiatric institution was completely remodeled and turned into the new community/recreation center. The rest of the building that was completely attached to the new rec center however remained abandoned.
During that summer of 2002 my brother and I would have our swim lessons in the morning while our older sister’s lessons were scheduled in the afternoon. While my sister was in her swimming lessons, my mom would take my brother and I on a picnic lunch outside the rec center. We brought a big blanket to sit on and always laid it out on the grassy lawn directly outside the old hospital building. I would eat my cheese and crackers and drink my kool aid jammer bottle all while looking at this creepy, abandoned building. As a kid this didn’t seem all that unusual but looking back on it now it does seem pretty creepy that we used to enjoy a summer picnic outside an abandoned hospital. I remember my mom explaining to me and my brother that it used to be a hospital but was now closed down. The building may have an attached to a newly remodeled rec center but it was just as old and run down as any abandoned building would be. There were broken windows left and right, dirty looking bricks and even an orange fence around the old entrance with a danger sign, probably to keep trespassers out. The three of us actually peered into one of the windows during one of our many picnics and saw an old looking sink along with other old medical equipment left within the walls of the old hospital. It was weird that all that equipment was just left inside the building rather than being moved somewhere else and reused. There were also a few smaller empty buildings around the property with broken windows as well. It was sad that the city spent all that time turning that small portion of the hospital into a recreation center but didn’t do anything with the remainder of the property. However in 2006 the hospital along with the other small buildings was finally demolished and the existing rec center had a new addition built on to make it a little more modern. The property is a lot nicer nowadays but is virtually unrecognizable from what once stood there, abandoned, unkept and incredibly creepy. I will always remember that old building and the picnics we had on its front lawn.
