Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital

When was this "asylum" opened, and what did it look like?

 One of the more infamous asylums in New Jersey lore is Greystone, located in Morris Plains. First conceived in 1871 and known as The New Jersey State Lunatic Asylum at Morristown, the institution first opened its doors (to a mere 292 patients) on August 17, 1876. The plan of the main building was drafted to allow for a total of 40 wards split into two wings, one wing for each sex. There was to be no communication between wards. The corridors served a purpose other than just separating wards: they provided for fire protection, so that a fire would be unable to spread past a single section of the building. Each ward was designed to accommodate 20 patients, with a dining room, exercise room and activity room.

Did it follow Kirkbride's design?  Paste images as appropriate - interior and exterior. 

Samuel Sloan was named architect of the main building and its smaller supporting buildings. Sloan chose to follow the Kirkbride Plan, a list of ideals pertaining to hospital design created by Thomas Story Kirkbride. There would be a center section for administrative purposes, then a wing on each side with three wards on a floor. Each ward would be set back from the previous one to allow patients to take in the beautiful grounds from their wards. The main building was constructed in 1877 and had the largest foundation of any building in the United States until the Pentagon was completed in the 1940s.

 Each ward was designed to treat patients according to their level of suspected curability. So-called incurable patients, often loud and violent, were housed in seclusion wards furthest from the center administration area. Quieter patients were placed closer to the front, such as the ward pictured above, so neither they nor visitors to the asylum would have to see or hear those in the “incurable” wards. The wards were designed to have arched alcoves in which patients could sit, play board games, knit, read, practice piano or participate in whatever indoor activities they were allowed. Each alcove had a large window facing outward towards the bucolic hospital property. Each section had its own alcove, with the exception of the seclusion wards.

What was this institution's original intent?

The original intent for this institution was to house the patients that would not fit at the only other insane asylum in the state at the time. Overtime this intention became what was to be the institutions downfall as overcrowding became the norm (the hospital, which was originally meant to house hundreds, once contained 7,674 patients in 1953). Overcrowding was a problem almost immediately in the hospital’s history. In 1881 the attic was converted into patient living space, and in 1887, the hospital’s exercise rooms were converted into more dormitories. Originally built to accommodate 350 people, the facility, having been expanded several times, reached a high of over 7700 patients resulting in unprecedented overcrowding conditions.

Who were the patients there? Do narratives of their experiences exist?

One of the hospitals more famous patients was folk singer/songwriter Woody Guthrie, who spend a stint at Greystone from 1956 to 1961. Woody was suffering from Huntington’s disease, a hereditary, degenerative nervous disorder which would eventual prove terminal. During his stay there, Woody referred to Greystone as “Gravestone.” This sardonically humorous nickname might prove more prophetic than Woody ever could have imagined, as Greystone might well be the last monument to a dying breed of New Jersey’s gargantuan mental institutions. 

                                                "They have stripped me of my madness, 

that disease had sown and cultured,

They have granted me the spirit 

and the will to smile in healthy gladness,

When I’d once frowned like a vulture, 

in six months time on Greystone’s verdant hill." 

 

~ Richard Davis Comstock, patient at Greystone, 

from his book Rhymes of a Raver, 1930 ~

Filmmaker Sean Stone, son of movie director Oliver Stone, set his sights on making a movie on the grounds of Greystone Park.  Simply titled Greystone Park, the filmmakers came here in 2009 to explore the haunted asylum famous for electroshock, insulin therapy, and lobotomies; however the crew got more than they bargained for and the film is based on their experience.

Did Jack The Ripper Die in Greystone? The title of the article in Weird, New Jersey stated, and I was immediately drawn in further to an article published in 1923 in the Empire News about a Norwegian sailor named Fogelma who was committed to the Morris Plains Lunatic Asylum in New Jersey, better known as Greystone. Apparently, he was subject to fits of rage and insanity, describing scenes and incidents that clearly connected him with the crimes of 1888 in London.  His sister also found press clippings in his belongings about the Whitechapel murders, and although Scotland Yard was notified, no follow up was ever done.  The archivist at Greystone said there was no record of such a patient, and one wonders about the validity of the newspaper article. 

What was the patients' experience like in that institution, and did that change over the course of the institution's history?

When the institution was first erected and the first patents came through the doors the intentions were only the best. Patients worked on the farms growing and raising food and performed hard labor tasks in the clearing away of building debris, excavating for roads, and sodding grounds. The plan of the institution called for carriage drives ending at all doorways, and a central road leading up to the front entrance flanked by trees on both sides. Grounds on both sides of the wings would provide for simultaneous exercise of both sexes while keeping them separate.Within the walls of the new building, male patients were able to make brooms, rugs, brushes, carpets, and do printing and bookmaking. 

By 1895, the State Lunatic Asylum was operating at 325 patients over capacity. The overcrowding was a major health and cleanliness issue, resulting in a small outbreak of typhoid fever, eventually blamed on the water supply. The passing of years brought no relief for a bursting hospital, occupied with 1,189 patients bedded down in an institution meant to hold only 800 every night. Cots were placed in activity rooms, exercise halls and hallways in order to try to find sleeping arrangements for all. "From a sanitary point of view these cots are an abomination," declared the board of managers. Cots were set up and taken down on a daily basis on the hallways, and were not able to be cleaned between uses. Patients often soiled themselves during the night, and the cots were simply handed out again the following evening.

Were bad conditions ever exposed to the public? How?

Greystone had dark years in the 1990s. Patient escapes became commonplace, including some that involved criminals and sex offenders. Staff were accused of abuse and rape, and some female residents became pregnant. Buildings were falling apart and lacking in basic creature comforts. Greystone was in danger of losing its accreditation from the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations. If this had happened, the hospital would have lost approximately $35 million annually from Medicaid and Medicare. A Senate task force was appointed to conduct a six-month probe on how to improve conditions, and the hospital was able to pass.

Once abandoned, rumors of haunting clouded Greystone, especially involving the dank underground tunnels which connected various building and were used to transport patients and other commodities. Numerous staff and patient accounts have 

Did the institution, its services, and patients change over time?

This facility was truly designed and built to be a self-containing city unto itself. Its huge complex included a post office, fire and police stations, a working farm, vocational and recreational facilities, its own gas and water utilities and a gneiss quarry (the source of the Greystone building material), a chapel, classrooms, dental clinic, its own infirmary, pavilions, wings, industrial buildings where patients could (or were forced to) work, staff housing, later cottages for the families of the patients and several other buildings used for different purposes.

 
How many people lived, worked, and died there? 

I couldn't really find the numbers for deaths and number of staff for this institution, I do know that at its capacity, there were over 10,000 patients housed at Greystone. 

Would you have wanted "treatment" in this institution?

I personally would not want treatment at this facility. Maybe when it was first erected and conceived, but when the overcrowding started I would not want to have been treated here. I had a hard time finding personal accounts of patients living there, but was able to read some comment posts of family members who had visited their relatives there and they said that the conditions were foreboding and deplorable. Also many of the accounts had statements as to how "creepy" they felt just coming into the building and could not imagine how it would have been to be a patient there. 

                                                                        References:

On, P., & Mark, M. (2013, August 20). Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital. Retrieved July 26, 2020, from https://weirdnj.com/stories/greystone-park-psychiatric-hospital/

www.wierdnj.com

https://www.goodreads.com/author_blog_posts/4881238-greystone-psychiatric-hospital-morris-plains-nj-sept-16-2013/

http://www.jfpl.org/NJHistoryHome.cfm