Kings Park Psychiatric Center: The Abandoned Long Island Asylum

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Kings Park and the Education of an Explorer Every pursuit has a place where beginners go first. Skateboarders have their parking lots and curbs. Climbers have their local crags. And if you are just finding your way into the world of urban exploration on Long Island, sooner or later someone points you toward Kings Park. The former Kings Park Psychiatric Center has become, over the years, something like a finishing school for people who don't yet know they're enrolled. Getting onto the grounds is straightforward. Finding a way inside the remaining buildings, if you know where to look, is not much harder. Which is exactly why the Parks Police have written thousands of trespassing tickets here in a single calendar year, why security visibly tightens every Halloween, and why local photography groups have been known to show up with large, enthusiastic crowds of people who want to take what they call "creepy" photos of old hospital asylums. The place attracts everyone, which...
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Brooklyn Graffiti Skull Mural






No pirate treasure here but I did find some rope to hang myself.


This remnant of a much larger complex that burned in 2006 was once home to American Manufacturing Company. It was built in 1890 and manufactured 10 million pounds of oakum used in caulking wooden ship seams. Employing over 2,000 workers who lived nearby in Greenpoint Brooklyn. Mainly female Polish and Lithuanian immigrant workers. American Manufacturing Company started off as a two-story jute mill quickly expanding from one block to six. In 1920, it became the largest hemp and jute factory in the manufacture of 400,000 pounds of cotton bagging and ties daily.









Later known as the forgotten Greenpoint Terminal Market. The historic warehouses burned in 2006 as it was revealed they were being referred to by The Municipal Art Society as historical landmarks to the Landmarks Preservation Commission. The Greenpoint fire was responded to by a large force of 350 firefighters on the day it burned. Now, a few remaining buildings that survived and were part of the complex have turned into residential buildings, and one outlier building is situated on the river. That building was all that remains until graffiti artist Greg Suits (Suitswon) placed that building on the map. Intrepid photographer Raphael Gonzalez saw it and his pictures went viral across news sites. Researching more about the building, the location was used in a Netflix series.


To learn more about the storied history of Greenpoint Terminal Market, you can read a well-written and in-depth piece by Bedford and Bowery, here.



To see the last vestiges of the market check out Nathan Kensinger's Flickr set.





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