Greenpoint Nurses' Residence: Inside Brooklyn's Abandoned Quarters






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. 





Whatever the building had become by that point, years of neglect and rot, the bones of the place still spoke. A black-detailed fireplace anchored the room with a kind of quiet dignity. Standing there, it was easy to picture what this space once meant: a threshold where nurses returning from long, exhausting shifts finally crossed into a place where they could breathe. They would have passed through this very foyer, peeled off their shoes, and made their way up the stairs to rest. The ground floor told a different story by the time I arrived. Trash and discarded clothing covered the floor. I moved carefully, not out of respect for trespass laws, but out of a very real fear of bedbugs. That anxiety was personal. A few winters earlier, I had unknowingly brought an infestation home from college during a winter semester. Getting rid of them was a miserable ordeal. Waking up each morning with new welts and bumps on your skin is the kind of slow madness that stays with you. 





















Inside an abandoned building thick with soft debris, every instinct was on high alert. I moved upstairs. The upper floors were quieter in a different way: emptier, less charged. Long hallways stretched toward windows at their far ends, the peeling paint along the walls somehow adding to the depth rather than taking away from it. At one point, a folding chair sat angled toward a window, facing outward. Besides it, a small pile of junk food wrappers, crushed soda cans, and alcoholic beverages told the story of whoever had last called this place shelter. I did not stay long up there. The ground-floor foyer was the heart of the building. Everything else was just corridors leading to empty rooms, devoid of furniture, with crackling lead paint on the bright yellow walls. 




























A month later, I came back with a friend. S was someone I had recently met, a curious person who wanted to see the building for himself. I was happy to play guide. We never made it inside. The gap I had used the first time had been patched over. As S and I stood across the street trying to think through our options, two other would-be explorers showed up and answered the question of what not to do. In broad daylight, bolt cutters in hand, they began loudly working on a chain-locked fence door. Within minutes, a nearby Cooper Park housing resident walking along the opposite sidewalk spotted them and made clear, in no uncertain terms, that the police were about to get a phone call. The two scattered down the block, cutters tucked under their arms, and disappeared. S and I looked at each other and walked away. He moved out of state not long after. He never did get to see that foyer.














The newly renovated Barbara Keliman men's homeless shelter. 









 
I returned one more time, on my own, after a fresh opening appeared in the fence. By then, though, the building's clock was running down. Plans for the site had been in the works for a while, and in November 2021, construction began in earnest. Today, the open field behind the old Nurses' Residence is being transformed. A 200-bed homeless men's shelter named after Barbara Keliman is going into the former residence itself. In the courtyard beyond it, an 18-story residential building called Kingsland Common is rising with 553 units of affordable housing. Completion is expected by 2027. For anyone wanting a deeper look at the history behind the site, photographer and photojournalist Nathan Kensinger wrote a thorough account worth reading: "Greenpoint Hospital: Nurses' Residence." He does the place justice.































 
šŸ„ Did You Live or Work at the Greenpoint Nurse Quarters?

Were you a nurse who lived in this residence? Did you work at Greenpoint Hospital or receive care there? Do you have photos from when the nurses' quarters were still active, or memories of this Greenpoint institution before its abandonment? With redevelopment now underway and the building being transformed into the Barbara Keliman Shelter, your memories are part of this site's living history.

Drop a comment below or contact me directly. Full credit is given to all contributors.

šŸ—½ More Brooklyn History & Lost Landmarks
From hospitals and nurses' quarters to factories and waterfront ruins — explore the institutions that shaped Brooklyn's neighborhoods.
šŸ„ The Greenpoint Hospital Nurse Quarters now house the Barbara Keliman Shelter. The adjoining Kingsland Common residence added 553 affordable apartments to the neighborhood.







Source(s): 






1. Kensinger, N. (2010, October 27). Greenpoint Hospital: Nurses residence. Kensinger Photography. https://kensinger.blogspot.com/2010/10/greenpoint-hospital-nurses-residence.html

2. NYC Department of Housing Preservation and Development. (n.d.). Greenpoint Hospital. City of New York. Retrieved June 8, 2026, from https://www.nyc.gov/site/hpd/about/projects-detail.page?project=Greenpoint%20Hospital&borough=Brooklyn

3. Cobb, G. (2018, December 28). Former Greenpoint Hospital set for redevelopment. Greenpointers. https://greenpointers.com/2018/12/28/former-greenpoint-hospital-set-for-redevelopment/

4. bkcory. (2016, May 14). Greenpoint Hospital's abandoned nurse's quarters. Abandoned Relics. https://abandonedrelics.wordpress.com/2016/05/14/greenpoint-hospitals-abandoned-nurses-quarters/

5.  Flaks, R. (2025, July 3). Kingsland Commons in Williamsburg to offer homeless shelter, affordable units on campus of former hospital. News 12 Brooklyn. https://brooklyn.news12.com/2025/07/03/kingsland-commons-in-williamsburg-to-offer-homeless-shelter-affordable-units-on-campus-of-former-hospital/3YldNT7GWEDZX4REJxoQAd

6. Bolger, J., & Hogan, G. (2016, November 2). City allowed open pipe to flood historic Greenpoint Hospital for 2 years. DNAinfo New York. https://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/20161102/greenpoint/greenpoint-hospital-flooding-busted-pipe
Location: 300 Skillman Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11211, USA

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