Kirkbride's Final Chapter (?)

On Friday we read yet again about the end of the road for the Kirkbride building, the imposing former administration building of the old Greystone state mental hospital.

We’ve heard this was coming for a while. Plans were filed to “save” the structure by putting in retails shops and condos. That would’ve created an influx of people on the roads of Parsippany and Morris Plains, among others, and strain community services.

In the end, though, it came down to money, as all things do in this state. The building fell into disrepair. Cleaning it up would be extremely expensive for the state or whatever group bought it. It is a huge building and to make it work profitably it had to have people living there. More people living in a county park?

The state now wants to make its portion of the old hospital property (the part not sold to Morris County for $1 to create Central Park of Morris County with its athletic fields, playground and hiking trails) into ”open space,” whatever that means. The original estimate for demolition was $50 million. if the Daily Record article summarized in Patch is correct, the Hanover firm making the bid somehow got the cost down to $35 million.

Such a bargain! No wonder the governor took it. We can’t pass a budget, we can’t keep the roads and bridges from crumbling, we can’t put judges on the bench but by gum we can take down that old eyesore and the rest of the “cottages” and outbuildings and create ”open space.”

Believe me, I am happy for the open space. We live in a densely populated state. Since it took down the old wards, the county has created a pretty good park, even for those of us who don’t play soccer and just like to walk along the brook.

The Kirkbride discussions remind me of the Kuzar mansion, which was donated to the state many, many years ago along with the land that is now High Point State Park in Sussex County. The mansion just sat there and rotted away. The first time I went to High Point nearly 20 years ago I looked down and you could plainly see the decay. At some point the state decided it cost less to just take it down than to repair and replace it, and down it went.

I guess taking down an eyesore is a lot better that than putting up another Revel, Atlantic City’s version of that the Meadowlands’ Xanadu.

To me Kirkbride is a reminder of when Greystone was a more pastoral place, allowing patients to wander in a park-like setting and work on a farm. But it is also a reminder how the mentally ill were later warehoused in such deplorable conditions that the hospital had to be closed down and a new, smaller and more modern one built. I walked through Greystone when I first moved to the area and felt I was being watched through the bars of the empty wards. I didn’t return until the area became the county park.

I won’t miss that old building. Move on, I say.

If it actually happens. Until I see the wrecking ball I have my doubts. I’ve heard that song before.