The Harlem Valley Psychiatric Center

If you’ve driven up Route 22 into Wingdale, or gotten off at the Harlem Valley-Wingdale train station, you’ve seen this place. It’s a massive conglomeration of buildings scattered through the hills looking empty, forlorn and utterly eerie. But up until just 15 years ago, the Harlem Valley Psychiatric Center was a premiere treatment facility for the state’s mentally ill.

For an afternoon, we were allowed on the grounds to shoot what was left of this once thriving state hospital. As you can see, what we found was eye-opening to say the least. This is the ONLY authorized video shot inside the facility that you will find on the internet.



Opened in 1924, the Psychiatric Center quickly grew from a new facility housing just 24 patients to a fully functional community of its own. They grew their own crops, slaughtered their own beef and basically ran their operations entirely independently. They even had their own baseball field, where, during the 1950s, patients played as part of an intramural league.

The baseball field during Harlem Valley's heyday.

The field as it looks today.

Meat lockers inside the main hospital's gigantic kitchen.

For a time, Harlem Valley was also on the cutting edge of psychiatric treatment. During the 1930s, insulin shock treatments were conducted there, with physicians traveling from all over the country and from Canada to receive instruction on administration. As World War II dawned, the hospital was already conducting electric shock treatment and, by the 50s they had begun instituting lobotomies (though the drastic procedure was done rarely).

As the decades wore on, the Psychiatric Center continued to serve the community until budget restraints forced it to close down. On January 31, 1994, the flag was lowered and the hospital closed its doors forever.

This was an "ice cream shop" that was part of the recreational facilities inside the Hospital.

The kitchen area, now a total ruin.

Now, coming up on two decades since its closure, the hospital may get a second lease on life, with the Knolls of Dover project well underway. A radical revamping of the shambling Psychiatric Center, the Knolls project will turn the facility into a series of homes, including a Golf community and a Village Center with the potential to bring in more than $11 million in new property tax revenue.

Smith Hall, where patients would watch movies and various other performances.

Projector oil. Has this can lain undisturbed for 15 years?

Looking back at the auditorium from the stage.

The Nurse's Station. Note the small doors beneath the middle window. This is where medications were dispensed to the patients.

The future of the Harlem Valley is, as of this writing, still up in the air. But for now, its past remains standing silent amongst the hills, the voices of those who spent their days there still echoing in its empty hallways.