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...

Crown Palace Hotel Razed For New Housing

 

About six years ago, I wrote a small piece on this mystery hotel building. At the time I could not find any history or a name associated with the three-story building that was built in 1931. The property was mostly fenced off and used mostly as storage for school buses and other private vehicles. The building entranceways were always bricked off but occasionally I would see someone had busted through the lower cinder-blocked doorway probably looking for scrap metal inside. However, recently I came upon an entry in "The Jewish Chronicle Guide" listing the Crown Palace Hotel under the address 570-600 Crown St, Brooklyn. I always knew the structure eerily resembled a hotel based on its architectural facade and the wide swath of open land that goes back decades in the 1940s and 1980s satellite imagery. It also matches the demographic makeup of the Crown Heights neighborhood to have a hotel for traveling Jews in the area.





Sadly, the building was demolished sometime earlier last year since the New York City Department of Buildings (DOB) application for it was submitted in May 2021 and signed off on December 22, 2021. The adjoining lot was also cleared of the wild-growing trees as seen above in Google Street View in July 2021. Making a way in its place will be a 75-foot-tall condo development with a combined square footage of 185,149. A community space is also allocated to the building as well as two loading berths. Currently, the lot is used as an off-street private parking lot.


Status: Demolished

Location: 600 Crown St & 630 Crown St, Brooklyn NY



Source:


1. "Two Buildings To Be Built On Empty Lot On Crown and Troy", October 24, 2021, CrownHeightsInfo

2. The Jewish Chronicle Travel Guide. (1997). United Kingdom: Jewish Chronicle Publications. [Page]

3. Londono, Vanessa, "Permits Filed For 600 Crown Street In Crown Heights, Brooklyn", NY Nimby, December 21, 2022


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