Opened 1931 as the world's largest psychiatric hospital — peak population 13,875 — now a partially active facility with a museum in Building 45 displaying artifacts from Long Island's shuttered asylums.
998 Crooked Hill Road, Brentwood, NY 11717
Research updated June 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
The Long Island Psychiatric Museum in Building 45 is free by appointment. The active facility grounds are restricted; do not trespass on non-museum areas.
Access
Wheelchair OK
Building 45 is accessible; campus roads are paved. Abandoned building areas are off-limits.
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1931 · World's Largest Psychiatric Hospital at Opening (1931) · Peak Population 13,875 Patients (1954) · Lobotomy Program in Building 23 (1940s–1970s) · Long Island Psychiatric Museum (Building 45)
Construction of Pilgrim State Hospital began in 1929 on 1,000 acres in Brentwood, and the hospital opened October 1, 1931. The facility was named for Charles W. Pilgrim, a former New York State Commissioner of Mental Health. The scale of the campus reflected the ambitions of early 20th-century institutional psychiatry: Pilgrim operated as a self-contained community with its own police department, fire department, courts, post office, Long Island Rail Road station, power plant, and farm. By 1934 the patient population had reached 6,000; by the early 1950s it exceeded 13,875, making Pilgrim the largest mental hospital in the United States and, by some accounts, the world.
The postwar period brought more aggressive treatment modalities. Beginning in the 1940s, lobotomies were performed at Pilgrim — transorbital and prefrontal procedures, with Building 23 documented as a primary surgery site. Electroconvulsive therapy was introduced alongside lobotomy. The best-documented controversy involves Beulah Jones, a patient between 1952 and 1972 who received both lobotomy and ECT and was left with lasting impairment.
Deinstitutionalization policies beginning in the 1960s and accelerating through the 1970s and 1980s sharply reduced the patient population. Many of the campus's original buildings fell into disuse and ruin. The hospital transitioned to a much smaller operation under the New York State Office of Mental Health, now carrying 14 active beds.
Building 45 houses the Long Island Psychiatric Museum, which documents the history of Pilgrim alongside Kings Park, Central Islip, and Edgewood institutions through artifacts, photographs, newsletters, and relics from demolished buildings. On November 5, 2020, Building 45 flooded and destroyed most of the museum's collection; restoration was described as ongoing as of the most recent available reporting.
Sources
Pilgrim Psychiatric Center's reputation as a haunted site is inseparable from its institutional history. The combination of its former scale — a campus built for nearly 14,000 patients, now mostly abandoned — and the documented use of lobotomy and ECT produces the kind of setting that paranormal investigators and dark tourism visitors consistently seek out.
The most specific circulating account involves a figure in a straitjacket seen standing on the roadside adjacent to the campus at approximately 11 PM; in the account, the figure disappeared as the driver approached. The story is described in regional haunted-place compilations and the New York Haunted Houses directory. A second pattern in visitor accounts involves feelings of being followed or watched after leaving the campus — the sense that something attached itself during the visit.
Building 23 draws specific attention as the documented site of lobotomy procedures. Regional coverage describes thousands of 45-minute surgeries conducted there beginning in the 1940s and continuing into the 1970s. The building is among the abandoned structures on the campus that are no longer accessible to visitors.
The Long Island Psychiatric Museum in Building 45 — when fully operational — documented this history through physical artifacts from Pilgrim and three other closed Long Island institutions. The museum's November 2020 flood and ongoing restoration mean that visitors planning a museum visit should confirm current access before arriving.
The museum in Building 45 displays historical artifacts, photographs, newsletters, and relics from Kings Park, Central Islip, Pilgrim, and Edgewood psychiatric hospitals. The collection documents Long Island's institutional psychiatry era. Note: significant portions of the collection were destroyed by a flood in November 2020; restoration is ongoing.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
Traverse City, MI
The Northern Michigan Asylum opened in 1885 as the third state psychiatric hospital in Michigan, designed under the Kirkbride Plan by architect Gordon W. Lloyd. Renamed the Traverse City State Hospital, the institution operated until 1989; the campus was redeveloped beginning in 2002 as the Village at Grand Traverse Commons, a mixed-use district of shops, restaurants, residences, and adaptive-reuse offices.
Buffalo, NY
The Richardson Olmsted Complex in Buffalo was constructed beginning in 1871 as the Buffalo State Asylum for the Insane, based on the Kirkbride Plan of psychiatric treatment. Designed by renowned architect H.H. Richardson and landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, the 203-acre campus formally opened in 1880. The facility operated as a psychiatric hospital until 1974, when patients were transferred and the complex fell into decay. Modern restoration efforts have partially reopened the campus as Hotel Henry.
East Bethany, NY
Rolling Hills Asylum opened in 1827 as the Genesee County Poorhouse on a 200-acre farm in East Bethany, New York. The institution operated for 147 years, becoming the Genesee County Infirmary in 1938 and the Genesee County Nursing Home in 1964 before closing in 1974. More than 1,700 deaths are documented on the property. The building reopened in 1992 and now operates as a documented paranormal-tourism site on the Haunted History Trail of New York State.