The Kings Park Psychiatric Center was established in 1885 by Kings County in nearby Suffolk County, adjoining the Society of St. Johnland established by William Augustus Muhlenberg, prior to the consolidation of Kings County with Queens, Manhattan, Staten Island and the Bronx, to form modern New York City. The official name of the hospital in its first 10 years was the Kings County Asylum, taken from the name of the county that Brooklyn occupied. The hospital was revolutionary at the time in the sense that it was a departure from the asylums of folklore, which were overcrowded places where gross human rights abuses often occurred. The asylum, built by Brooklyn to alleviate overcrowding in its own asylums, was a "farm colony" asylum, where patients worked in a variety of farm-related activities, such as feeding livestock and growing food, as this was considered to be a form of therapy.
Eventually, the Kings County Asylum began to suffer from the very thing that it attempted to relieve—overcrowding. New York State responded to the problem in 1895, when control of the asylum passed into state hands, and it was renamed the Kings Park State Hospital. The surrounding community, which used to be known as Indian Head, adopted the name "Kings Park," by which it is still known today. The state eventually built the hospital into a self-sufficient community that not only grew its own food, but also generated its own heat and electricity, had its own Long Island Rail Road spur and housed its staff on-site.
As patient populations grew throughout the early part of the 20th century, the hospital continued to expand. By the late 1930s, the state began to build upward instead of outward. During this period, the famous 13-story Building 93 was constructed. Designed by state architect William E. Haugaard and funded with Works Progress Administration money, the building, often dubbed "the most famous asylum building on Long Island," was completed in 1939. It was used as an infirmary for the facility's geriatric patients, as well as for patients with chronic physical ailments.
After World War II, patient populations at Kings Park and the other Long Island asylums increased markedly. In 1954, the patient census at Kings Park topped 9,303, but would begin a steady decline afterward. By the time Kings Park reached its peak patient population, the old "rest and relaxation" philosophy surrounding farming had been succeeded by more invasive techniques of pre-frontal lobotomies and electroshock therapy. However, those methods were soon abandoned after 1955, following the introduction of Thorazine, the first widely used drug in the treatment of mental illness. As medication made it possible for patients to live normal lives outside of a mental institution, the need for large facilities such as Kings Park diminished, and the patient population began to decrease. In addition, activists worked in legal suits through the 1970s to reduce the patient population in major institutions, arguing that people could better be supported in smaller community centers.
By the early 1990s, the Kings Park Psychiatric Center, as it came to be known, was much reduced. Many of the buildings were shut down or reduced in usage. This included the massive Building 93. By the early 1990s, only the first few floors of the building were in use. While many patients were de-institutionalized and large facilities were closed, there was a shortage of small community centers, which were never developed in the number needed. This resulted in many more mentally ill people being caught up and retained in jails and prisons because of difficulties in dealing with the world. Many of the homeless in urban areas are mentally ill, people with chronic illnesses who have difficulty keeping up with medication regimes or resist them.
In response to the declining patient population, the New York State Office of Mental Health developed plans to close Kings Park as well as another Long Island asylum, the Central Islip Psychiatric Center, in the early 1990s. The plans called for Kings Park and Central Islip to close, and the remaining patients from both facilities to be transferred to the still-operational Pilgrim Psychiatric Center, or be discharged. In the fall of 1996, the plans were implemented. The few remaining patients from Kings Park and Central Islip were transferred to Pilgrim, ending Kings Park's 111-year run.
