Greenpoint Nurses' Residence: Inside Brooklyn's Abandoned Quarters

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1940s Greenpoint Hospital Campus Tax Photo There is a certain kind of quiet that only abandoned buildings have. Not peaceful, quiet. More like held-breath quiet. The kind that makes you hyper-aware of every footstep, every creak, every shadow shifting at the edge of your vision. I found that quiet on a cloudy afternoon in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, standing outside a chain-link fence and looking up at the old Nurse Quarters of Greenpoint Hospital. I had stumbled onto the building almost by accident. I was deep into researching other vacant structures across the borough when the Nurses' Residence turned up on the blogs. The fact that it sat close to home made the decision easy. One overcast day, I drove slowly down the block on a hunch, scanning the fence line. That is when I spotted it: a gap, barely noticeable unless you were looking for it. No rope. No gear. Just an opening and a window of time between passing cars and foot traffic. I slipped inside. The entrance foyer stopped me cold...
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St. Mary's Hospital Ongoing Renovation

Ongoing construction March 29, 2017.



The former Crown Heights hospital continues its transition from a derelict eyesore to a much anticipated 170,000-square-foot nursing home complex once completed. The eight-story hospital was constructed in 1975 and found itself in bankruptcy in 2005 due to heavy financial losses operating. Since 2005, it was left abandoned before being snapped up by its current owner, a NY healthcare group, in 2014,  who will be reopening it as a 280-bed nursing home facility. It seems nursing facilities are on the rise in New York City. Another abandoned church in another borough is also up for demolition to make way for a nursing facility.


During its demolition work, workers were bilked out of $100,000 in wages when the contractor, Andrew Miller, promised workers $14-20 hourly wages and benefits. None of it was found to be true before being prosecuted for fraud by the Brooklyn DA. St. Mary's primarily served the poor and uninsured but could not sustain its yearly $10 million capital needs and losses any further in 2005. Unfortunately, St. Mary's Hospital is no longer abandoned and another one bites the dust from inactive to active. 

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