Stories; Latest Weird News; Upcoming Events; Weird NJ TV; Store; Tag Archives: asylum A Farewell to Overbrook Asylum (Essex County Hospital) For many decades, rumors of ghosts haunting the grounds of Overbrook have been in circulation. googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('Unit6'); }); Overbook asylum.Patients in the Hydrotherapy Room 1960. All pictures are courtesy of Rex Young, whose Facebook page is a cavalcade of wonder. Owned by Essex County, some of the hospital’s property has been converted into a park, but much of its acreage has been sold to a developer on … The complex came to be known as Overbrook, due to its location just beyond the Peckman River. Now cleared of all structures, it is developing into a prime recreation and nature study reservation. Even though Mark and Mark constantly warn their loyal readers about trespassing, it is still rampant along the ghostly, weed infested lawns and pathways. Its campus sat in Cedar Grove with 34-buildings, many of which were used to house patients. Duck had these chilling recollections of Overbrook: “I still remember using the road through there as a short cut and the patients literally hanging out of windows screaming and carrying on during a summer full moon. The Essex County Hospital Center, colloquially known as Overbrook Asylum, was built in 1896 in Cedar Grove, New Jersey. I heartily advise my fellow history lovers to stay off this acreage! Piano at Overbrook Asylum NJ. Once completed the campus had over a dozen buildings on its 90 acres, most of them connected via miles of subterranean tunnels running under the grounds. …In 1978 alone, there were 150 reports of missing patients, one of whom walked off in his pajamas, broke into a Cedar Grove home, took a carving knife and hammer and tried to abduct the housewife while stealing her car. Soon, the Overbrook facility will join the Mountain Sanatorium in being demolished and gone forever. The guards that came tell him not to worry, then go and open the door and call into the tunnel ‘hey Frank.’ A minute later a small meek voice says ‘Yea.’ They say ‘We got a job for you.”  After a minute of silence they say, ‘A real important job.” Another minute passes and then this little guy maybe, five feet tall comes out and says ‘OK, I’m ready.’ The friend always made sure the door was blocked first thing when he got to work after that.”. Note: I had the pleasure of serving as therapeutic activities volunteer at the Essex County Hospital Center from 1983-1985 on half a dozen wards, but mostly with a female geriatric unit. We’ve read the rules by which patients were controlled, the myriad and macabre ways a woman could end up in an asylum, seen the patients’ art, recalled the race riots, and seen haunting portraits of the people transformed by bars and harsh regimes into inmates. Unfortunately, there were many trespassers roaming about, entering windows and doors, and playing “chickie” with the cops and security forces patrolling the old place. In 1896, Essex County officials designated 325 acres of land as the new location of the Essex County Asylum for the Insane. The website www.baristanet.com is a Montclair based placeblog that has become a major online destination for those seeking to read news and offer up opinions regarding Essex County happenings. Oct 31, 2013 - Overbrook Asylum is an Offbeat Attraction in Woodland Park. Don’t go where you are not supposed to, my friends. It closed in 2007. For great art and culture delivered to your door, visit our shop. In the winter of 1917, the hospital suffered a catastrophe, the e hospital’s boilers failed and 24 patients froze to death in their beds. The hospital was used as a normal hospital then converted to house mentally ill patients that were in need of care. You can also find abandoned asylums, creepy psychiatric hospitals, and haunted prisons across New Jersey. The reading will begin at 7 p.m. and include original video footage and artwork of Overbrook Mental Hospital by Wheeler Antabanez. We were shipped to Bloomfield High School to complete our education through grade twelve. As one would imagine, with a history stretching back well over a century, hundreds of stories have come out of the hospital complex. ‘I cannot believe, today, that the world almost ignored those people and what was happening. Even more recently, AFTER all the present rash of trespassing arrests began, Essex County once again rented the hospital out to another production company, this time from the Travel Channel. Be anything but an architect" - Kurt Vonnegut. It seems that everyone in Cedar Grove, New Jersey has a spooky story or two about the Overbrook Asylum. Overbrook Asylum (Cedar Grove, NJ) | Long Alley by Clothing Boutique Use left and right keyboard arrows to navigate gallery images. Hopefully, our efforts will be successful and we should be able to secure and preserve buildings or sites of historical importance and interest. Efforts to preserve the facility’s impressive brownstone façade were unsuccessful and demolition is underway to make room for even more McMansions. These two facilities, and the many abandoned buildings associated with them, became Essex County’s most legendary location, home to escaped lunatics, troubled ghosts, and roving gangs of ne’er do wells. Cedar Grove, New Jersey: One of Essex County's largest abandoned complexes is no more. Originally, the entire Overbrook site was slated for development by a large outfit specializing in upscale housing. … Print Purchase Info. Originally constructed during the turn of the 19th and 20th Centuries on land in the township of Cedar Grove, New Jersey the Essex County Hospital Center, more commonly referred to as Overbrook Asylum, was at first a general hospital before a change of ownership in 1920 led to it becoming a mental institution. Fabulous Photos of Lunchtime Dancing at the Top Rank Dancehall on Charing Cross Road in 1963. To focus on one life makes the place more human. 561 were here. New Jersey; Agricultural Research Facility . For most of the 1990s, the fate of the Overbrook and Mountain Sanatorium properties was one of the most hotly debated issues in Essex County. One day I was in my yard sunning myself along with my infant son when I heard my neighbor call to me in a loud whisper. Overbrook even had its own semi-professional baseball team that competed with teams from neighboring towns! Below are case notes and letters from patients. New Jersey's Local Legends and Best Kept Secrets Latest Issue! The number of patients that made their way to Overbrook plummeted drastically. The offended developer is now crying in his beer (or should I say his Chablis?) The facility was so large that it had its own train stop on the Caldwell Branch of the Erie Railroad, used to transport the massive amounts of coal and fuel needed to run the hospital complex. Though it only closed down officially in 2007, the complex has long been home to abandoned buildings, and local lore has been quick to populate them with unexplained voices, vengeful spirits, and mysterious presences. We have featured the history of mental health treatment elsewhere on flashbak. The Essex County Asylum for the Insane became known as Overbrook, due to its location just beyond the Peckman River. Here’s some quotes from the paper of record: “The 1,800 insane patients at the Essex County Hospital, at Cedar Grove, NJ, are sffering serious discomfort and in some cases incurring danger from the practically complete collapse of the heating and lighting plant of the institution. Visit our SHOP for all of your Weird NJ needs: Magazines, Books, Shirts, Patches, Hats, Stickers, Magnets, Air Fresheners. I did. Situated among public parks and residential neighborhoods, the… Crime does not pay, even when exploring broken down and often dangerous old structures. ), Essex County chapter, I along with my colleagues advocated about ten years or so ago for the improvements at Overbrook and, finally, for the closing of the outmoded Victorian facility and the building of a state of the art, modern psychiatric hospital on county owned property in suburban Cedar Grove. We don't want to rely on ads to bring you the best of visual culture. Once again, I’d like to caution readers of this fine publication to avoid trespassing on this eastern half of the old place. Oh boy, if only THESE walls could talk. Overbrook Hospital, NJ Overbrook Hospital is a Hospital in Essex County, New Jersey.It has an elevation of 133 meters, or 436 feet. These ancient public tracts were sold piecemeal to the so-called “developers” at fairly ridiculous prices considering the very high prices for property in toney West Essex. If your local book seller, newsstand or convenience store doesn’t carry Weird NJ, just tell them to call us toll free at (973) 256-2011 and we’ll be happy to stock your favorite store for you. Locals dubbed the … Christmas In Washington DC 1941 – Shopping At Woolworth’s Five-and-Dime And Waiting For The Greyhound Bus Home, Schwing! Now, I am proud to have beenborn and raised in good old Newark, New Jersey’s largest city. The following are some highlights: User Y.A. Aug 3, 2018 - This Pin was discovered by Amanda K.. Photos London In The 1960s By Bob Hyde, Mourners Watching Robert F. Kennedy’s Funeral Train Pass By From New York City to Washington DC on June 8 1968, Parking Snap: The Satisfaction of Matching Cars With Streets in 1970s New York City, Seeing America In Isolation by George Ault (1940s), ‘Greetings from Nowhere’: 10 Vintage Postcards from Peculiar Lands of Disenchantment. googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('Unit5'); }); In 1896, officials in Essex County, New Jersey, earmarked land for the construction of a hospital for mental health. The hospital was laid out at the bottom of a hill atop which sat the Mountain Sanatorium – a facility used at various times to treat tuberculosis patients, wayward children, and drug abusers. He was later arrested in Pennsylvania. Mental health care has come a long way in the past decades. In the mid-1920s, the tri-state mental correction board bought the land and converted Overbrook into a mental institution, but within a few years, Overbrook became seriously overcrowded. CEDAR GROVE, NJ — Weird NJ correspondent Wheeler Antabanez has been photographing Overbrook Asylum since he was a kid. TIMELINE 10 January 1971 - Members of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) carried out an early form of 'punishment attack' by tarring and feathering four men who were accused of criminal activities in, Julie Newmar was Catgirl. We love producing flashbak. How could we have all stood by and have let that happen? I was born and schooled in Essex County, New Jersey. She said she observed a man acting strangely, and that I should pick up the baby and hurry over to her house. The Overbrook Asylum is slowly being torn down by the county. Discover (and save!) Abandoned Creepy Haunted House In New Jersey - Duration: 11:13. Overbrook even had its own semi-professional baseball team that competed with teams from neighboring towns! During the twenty days since the first of December there have been twenty-four deaths in the institution, as against eight for the entire month last year. In the movie, it will be called St. Anthony’s. For a generation of North Jersey teens, a visit to the Overbrook site was a rite of passage – going to “The Asylum,” “The Bin,” or “The Hilltop”, as it was called by various gangs of teens, was a surefire way to test your mettle and impress your friends. Marlboro Psychiatric Hospital . Good things are definitely worth waiting for! It also was a focal point of the area’s local legends. See more ideas about cedar grove, hospital, county hospital. Growing up, I lived in Cedar Grove very near the Verona line. Originally named the Essex County Penitentiary, the “Pen” was opened in 1872 and closed four years ago when the state of the art Essex County Correctional Facility opened in Newark. Conditions at Overbrook became so bad during this catastrophe that the hospital’s director sent a letter to the families of interred patients encouraging them to remove their relatives from the hospital’s care until the problems could be fixed. Patients were fed largely by food grown in huge farming field located on the hospital’s property, which they also worked as part of their rehabilitative occupational therapy. We rolled up the windows, locked the doors, and never used it again. It was even larger than most of the State Hospitals in operation. You can read more about their experiences here. The Essex County Hospital Center at Overbrook underwent a series of transformations, and was world recognized for being a leader in psychiatric care. As many readers know, the Overbrook parcel slated for park purposes contains many unusual and very weird old buildings. Needless to say, I was scared to death. Overbrook Hospital opened in 1898 serving all ages, from adolescents to the elderly, according to local historian Robert Williams. and is planning a breach of contract lawsuit against the County of Essex. A salaried farmer lived on the Overbrook grounds to oversee these operations – in 1920, the at that time exorbitantly priced $50,000 home built for the “Overbrook farmer” created a high amount of controversy. But the stories that abound regarding the site have ensured that it will never be forgotten. Many of us are well aware of the infamous Greystone Park in Morristown, and Overbrook Insane Asylum in Cedar Grove was used as the set for the screen adaption of Chuck Palahniuk’s Choke. It was the State of New Jersey's largest county hospital. The numbers are huge. In 1986 and 1987 I served as a part time adult basic skills teacher at the Essex County Jail Annex in Caldwell. Located in what was then Verona and is now Cedar Grove, the facility housed mentally ill patients who required daily care. In 1896, Essex County officials designated 325 acres of land as the new location of the Essex County Asylum for the Insane. That, however, is likely to be lost on filmgoers unfamiliar with the facility once known as the Essex County Asylum for the Insane and later simply Overbrook…. On December 21, 1917, The New York Times published an article that detailed what may be one of the worst tragedies to occur at Overbrook – the failure of a set of boilers during a cold wave that resulted in the deaths of 24 patients in 20 days. Interestingly enough, the eastern half of old Overbrook (the same side as the administration building), was also slated for sale to the voracious builders with their smoking bulldozers and deep pockets, but, lo and behold, in January of this year our county executive, Joseph DiVincenzo, Jr, announced that the deal was off and that ninety plus across of the former Overbrook would be developed into an Essex County park. But that, my friends, is another story! As a member of the board of trustees of the National Alliance on Mental Illness (N.A.M.I. If any place were truly haunted, it would have to be this site, where thousands of penitents paid their dues to society for almost a century and a half. He loved the job, as it allowed him to study while earning a living. Copies of The Old Asylum and Other Stories, published by Sagging Meniscus Press of Montclair, and the new issue of Weird NJ will be available for purchase and signing. –Gerald Caprio, President Verona Historical Society. You can also support us by signing up to our Mailing List. The facility was so large that it had its own train stop on the Caldwell Branch of the Erie Railroad, used to transport the massive amounts of coal and fuel needed to run the hospital complex. On April 27, 2013, we went to see Julie take questions at the Chicago Comic & Entertainment Expo at McCormick Place, in Chicago. In the late 19th century, the Essex County Hospital for the Insane in Newark, New Jersey was becoming alarmingly overcrowded, and funds were allocated to purchase ninety acres of rural land upstate for a new hospital. It is also extensively patrolled by Essex County Sheriff’s Department deputies twenty-four seven. Patients were fed largely by food grown in huge farming field located on the hospital’s property, which they also worked as part of their rehabilitative occupational therapy. Please consider becoming a patron with a recurring monthly subscription of your choosing. To make a very long story short, our N.A.M.I. And you can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. And due to the nature of the institution, many tragedies occurred on its grounds. Overbrook Asylum, or the Essex County Hospital Center, is a defunct psychiatric hospital that is located in the Township of Cedar Grove, New Jersey. As the president myself of a local historical society in nearby Verona, I hope to meet with other historians and conservationists to discuss the planned changes to the site, along the lines of collaborative efforts to identify and hopefully conserve parts of this very historic property. A few years later, when I was a young mother, we lived near Overbrook. During the Depression people used cotton flour bags and feed sacks to make clothes, curtains, diapers, awnings and other household items. It seems that everyone in Cedar Grove, New Jersey has a spooky story or two about the Overbrook Asylum.Though it only closed down officially in 2007, the complex has long been home to abandoned buildings, and local lore has been quick to populate them with unexplained voices, vengeful spirits, and mysterious presences. During its last days of existence, Overbrook is being immortalized on film, as it serves as a major location in the upcoming (October 2008) film Choke, based on the book by Fight Club author Chuck Palahniuk. Lambertville High School ... Essex County Overbrook Hospital . A bakery and firehouse also stood on the hospital complex’s grounds, further cementing its status as a strange town within a town. Locals dubbed the labyrinthine center ‘The Bin’. your own Pins on Pinterest In 1968, while attending Montclair State College, I worked several months as a corrections officer at the ancient Newark Street Jail in Newark. 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