The Philadelphia State Hospital at Byberry: A History of Misery and Medicine (Landmarks) (PA)

by J. P. Webster

  “That’s when the fences came down. The farming ended across the street. The azalea bushes were removed.” Jones reported, “That’s when the hospital started to look shabby. Hospital patients were given ground privileges, and you couldn’t differentiate between the patients and the aides.”

  According to Novak, patients became a familiar sight in the neighborhood. Children would yell, “Byberry Alert!” when they spotted a patient. Jones and Novak, both members of community group the Somerton Civic Association, agreed that the closing was the right move but expressed worry about the future of the property. Local residents knew the value of the property and did not want commercial buildings in their neighborhood. They were also concerned with the state’s plan of post-institutional care for the patients they had come to understand were in need of serious treatment. They did not want to see more patients wind up on their streets, and they showed little appreciation for the administration’s dilemma.

  At the same time, the temporary management team that had been put in place at the hospital, like its recent administrations, was dealt a painfully impossible hand. With its funds dropping so significantly, it was totally unrealistic to expect the remaining staff to be able to successfully transfer the population to where each patient needed to be the most. It is not difficult to find sympathy for the remaining staff at this point in their careers. It is fairly certain that they worked as hard as they could to achieve the removal of their patients to proper recipients. Their efforts were largely overlooked by the local media, however, and some attacks on the administration seem, in retrospect, unjustified. The staff that remained after 1987, for the most part, were in it until the end and deserve real praise for their courageous perseverance.

  On June 27, 1988, Dr. Donald Daiter, on behalf of Acting Chief of Clinical Services Emmanuel de la Cruz, issued a memo to the treatment team leaders asking them to make a list of patients on their wards who presented “a problem in management” and required a “controlled environment.” They were told to “carefully select only the handful of patients in this category” but that this was “not to be construed as ‘dumping’ or ‘getting rid of problems.’” These patients were the ones left who proved the most difficult to transfer, as they required consistent, intensive treatment that the community health system did not provide. There were only a few facilities left in the state for the treatment of dangerous mental patients, and they were too overcrowded to absorb the full load from Byberry, which made up about half of the state’s population of this class.

  The newspapers printed stories favoring both sides of the closure issue. Some joined the cause of keeping Byberry open. Inquirer writer F. Lewis Bartlett wrote:

  The editorial “Closing Byberry” appeared on the same day that the Inquirer carried two related news stories. One was about the awarding of a contract to an architectural firm to design a plan for industrial and commercial development on the 160 acre hospital site and the adjacent 238 acre state park after the hospital is closed. The potential for “big money” to have influenced the “clinical decision” to better serve Byberry’s patients in the community is hard to ignore. With public and private facilities, including shelters and boarding houses, unable to care properly for the victims of grave mental disorders, the future for the severely and chronically mentally ill patients looks bleak.

  Bartlett called attention to the fact that Philadelphia had no real backup facilities to which it could transfer the patients. Many on the patients’ rights side of the argument now recognized what could become an enormous problem. By putting too much effort into the closing of the hospital and not enough into a plan of post-hospital care, the patients could literally become sacrificial lambs for the achievement of the goal of closure, which was ironically for their benefit. Staff member Michael J. Orezechowski was also against the closing. He cited several instances of patients whom he claimed could not properly function outside of Byberry. Although perhaps a bit biased, his 1989 English thesis reads in part:

  Shortly after the discharges started, Thomas J. Gibbons Jr. wrote an article in the Philadelphia Inquirer entitled “Woman Hurled in front of Subway.” The story was of two people, an ex-psychiatric patient, and an innocent bystander. The ex-patient had been housed and treated at Byberry several times. He had walked off the hospital grounds and after several days was discharged for unauthorized abscence. Later, while standing on a subway platform, the patient pushed a bystander, Ruth Warrington, in front of an oncoming train. He was responding to internal stimuli that told him to push her.

  The closing of Philadelphia State Hospital is a tragedy, a tragedy that could have been avoided. Byberry is not being closed due to negligence and abuse. It is being closed because of greed. The undeveloped land is being sold for unknown dollars per acre. When contacted, Philadelphia Industrial Development Corporation (PIDC) refused to give any information, stating it is confidential. If a public institution is being sold, doesn’t the public have a right to know the price tag?

  Orezechowski and Bartlett were not alone in this opinion. Many believed there were political implications in the matter. Mayor Wilson Goode had earned a negative reputation after firebombing a city block in the MOVE ordeal, and his enemies tried to paint him as irresponsible for allowing Byberry’s closure but not getting too involved in the matter.

  At long last, on June 21, 1990, the last five of Byberry’s patients were released. Two were moved to Community Mental Health Centers, and three went to nursing homes. One patient had lived at Byberry for forty-five years prior to the closing. All five patients and remaining staff were reportedly in tears. The long shutdown process to them was like slowly suffocating a wounded friend or putting down an old dog. When the doors were finally closed and locked by the last of the staff, a sigh of relief was breathed by everyone who was conscious of it, as if they had just buried Hitler. The biggest step ever taken to right the wrongs presented by Pennsylvania’s psychiatric care system was complete, and Byberry’s ship finally sunk below the waterline.

  What remained in the immediate aftermath of the closing was a mix of feelings that ranged from overwhelming joy to utter hopelessness and sorrow. Most who had been involved with Byberry were in agreement that the right move was made; however, not everyone had the same faith in the new system. The scars left behind by Byberry may have finally stopped bleeding, but they were far from healed. The ninety-year-old anomaly of human indignity sucked the rug out from under the feet of its conquerors upon its quick departure from the world, leaving behind a frenzy of ideas on how it should be remembered. It seemed no one was too anxious to memorialize the hole that Byberry left in Philadelphia. The general public’s sympathy turned into fear and disgust rather quickly, as the homeless population in the city increased drastically. Now the patients that everyone read about and seemed to feel so sorry for were on their streets, at their subway stations, in their local fast food restaurants and at their local gas stations, and somehow, up close and personal, they did not seem as worthy of sympathy.

  A few months later, after somewhat of a cooling period, focus became narrowed on the reuse of the property. The Philadelphia Industrial Development Corporation (PIDC), a product of the Goode administration, which did not have a completely clean public image itself, had big plans for the property. Industrial parks, housing, a home for veterans and even a skating rink were in the works. When building inspectors and workers began their evaluation of the thirty buildings on the 136-acre property, they revealed that the buildings and tunnels contained asbestos. It was in ceiling and floor tiles, on pipes and in walls. It soon became clear that the buildings could not be reused or torn down without the complete abatement of every building. When estimates reached the eight-digit figure count, the state was forced to put the property’s reuse on hold.

  Reports from building inspectors also revealed something surely more unexpected. Talk of ex-patients squatting in the buildings surfaced, and police received several early reports of a strange man wandering the hospita
l grounds. Given the number of patients who had recently been released on their own recognizance and the number of years some of these patients had spent at the institution, it is very likely that a number of ex-patients returned to the only home they ever knew.

  For the first time in almost a century, Byberry did not appear in newspaper headlines. The pages seemed naked without the boldly worded summaries of shocking stories accompanied by eye-catching pictures. People could not remember a time when the area was not associated with the hospital. Patients were no longer plowing the fields or strolling the grounds. Nurses and attendants were no longer bustling about multitasking. Dangerous men were no longer escaping through windows. Perhaps most starkly of all, caring groups were no longer investigating the hospital, and no longer were patients suffering in their personal man-made hell. Byberry was silent.

  Chapter 8

  THE REDISCOVERY OF A DISCARDED PAST

  The Years of Abandon

  The idea of an abandoned mental hospital is a naturally intriguing one and the ideal setting for a horror film. Byberry’s ominous presence proved frightening enough in itself to keep most curious explorers out. The daily property patrol, performed by state troopers, helped keep out the rest. But it takes a certain type of person to take an interest in a place like Byberry. Unfortunately, the cavernous safety of Byberry attracted the homeless. The first adventurers to Byberry were copper salvagers and looters, followed by local teens and, of course, ghost hunters. Events from Byberry’s horrific past had formed a fearful collage. Somerton residents would never forget the hospital’s legend. Although many of these stories have proven to be fact-based, they have become highly exaggerated. The true horror of Byberry is what had already happened there, but don’t tell that to the folks of Somerton. They lived only feet from twentieth-century America’s most corrupt and notorious mental institution.

  The “Byberry Phenomenon” blew so far out of proportion that it became one of the country’s most famous haunted places. By 1993, the popular Philadelphia rock radio station Eagle 106 held a haunted house in the old nurses’ residences at Halloween for three consecutive years. A large percentage of the profit went to the Self-Help Movement. By 1995, the crumbling structures of the East Group had all been demolished except for one of Byberry’s oldest buildings—building C—which has been refurbished and is in use today (ironically) as a daycare center and office building. In 1997, the warehouses were demolished. In 2000, the west power plant and garages followed. Finally, C-6 and C-12 were torn down by 2001, leaving the laundry building as the only surviving building south of Southampton Road. The early explorers used the laundry building as an easy entrance to the rest of the property. Its steam tunnels provided an easy underground walkway under Southampton Road to the rest of the remaining campus.

  It wasn’t until about 2002, however, that Byberry reached the peak of its celebrity status. Websites began to emerge telling of the hospital’s exaggerated stories. Maps were available with hints on getting in, and even the security company’s shifts and driving routes were documented. It didn’t take long for even the painfully shy to show up with backpacks and flashlights. Before long, patterns of explorers began trekking through Byberry’s dank hallways, and a sub-culture emerged. Many of the “regular” explorers used tag or graffiti names to identify themselves to each other. Byberry was probably as puzzled by this new life within its walls as the people inside them were by Byberry. It was right around this time that I first discovered Byberry.

  The first thing I noticed was the smell. As I inched my head into N-10’s locker room window, I did not have to go inside to notice it: the smell of abandonment. As soon as I walked a few yards into the thin woods on the edge of the hospital property, the lights and sounds from the houses along Carter Road seemed to disappear completely, like they were never there at all. When I took my first trip to Byberry with my friend Jay, the experience the abandoned environment provided is something I will never forget. What occurred that night was the opening of a door in my mind that will never close again. I had to see every square inch of it. But the more I saw, the more questions I had and the more committed I became to finding answers. It was a vicious circle, and I had no idea what I was getting into.

  What remained of Byberry in 2002 was 138 acres of weeds, bushes and large, foreboding buildings, twenty-three of them. There was also most of the original West Group, which looked more like a lost and forgotten colonial town, swallowed up by nature. The North Group also remained entirely. Its ’50s-style blocky hulks had once looked like schools or complex-type apartment buildings. Now they looked like a scene out of a post-apocalyptic war zone. The solid nature of their structures appeared more startling to me in their abandoned state than the old West Group, which looked literally like something from a horror film. Although clearly creepy in nature, they were something that my eyes had experienced the sight of before, even if it was in a horror film. But the north group, their large façades ever looming above the high weeds and trees, seemed a much more out-of-place and unsettling sight to me. Buildings like that shouldn’t be abandoned, I thought. They were so ominous and eye-catching, too. The recently constructed industrial parks and the well-kept homes surrounding the 138 acres of gloom made its presence that much more surreal. People jogged and walked their dogs past it, cars zipped by on busy Route 1, and planes flew overhead frequently coming in and out of the Northeast Philadelphia Airport, but nobody seemed to acknowledge Byberry’s presence.

  There was really not an abundance of graffiti on the buildings’ exteriors in 2002, and they seemed all the more sinister. I returned several times with friends, people from school and basically anyone I could get to go with me. I pushed myself into darker and darker corners, into the closets and bathrooms and then crawlspaces and tunnels. But the questions I had only became more pressing and burning. When I typed “Byberry” into an Internet search engine, I was presented with information that pulled my interest even more. There was no official website, and almost all of the results also contained the phrase “haunted house.” Websites made by local teenagers showed crude maps and blurry photographs showing a morgue and an auditorium. This place was really engulfing me now. I contacted the creator of one of the websites and arranged a meet up. The site creator, Jim, was more than happy to enlighten me about the various nicknames some of the buildings had earned by local teens who had been partying inside for years.

  Referring to the map he had made of the property, Jim pointed to N-10 first. “This one’s called ‘infinity,’” he said. It was given this name because of the two large, windowless basement recreation areas the building featured. In the dark, a flashlight was incapable of illuminating the entirety of either of these areas, and they appeared to go on for infinity. According to Jim’s map, W-6 was known as “the mortician’s building,” and W-7 was simply known as “birdshit” due to the copious amounts of pigeon droppings that had accumulated inside. N-9 building was labeled “champ’s couch,” referring to the giant concrete partition on the roof that was conveniently shaped like a sofa and was a popular gathering point for regular visitors. And of course, W-3 was “the morgue building,” calling attention to its most popular feature. It appeared that there was life within this dead environment—a subculture. I was hooked.

  Once I saw that there were others who also felt intrigued by the place, my obsession seemed less bizarre. I began taking regular trips to Byberry with friends, sorting through whatever I could find inside—paperwork, photos, patient records and reports. The material left inside the buildings, W-3 especially, was enough to answer some of the questions that had been bouncing around in my head, such as each building’s designated purpose. They had all seemed out of place to me, just a random collection of weird buildings. But when I learned their purpose and layout, my intrigue only doubled. I had never had much interest in the past. My sense of history was a cloudy mess. Byberry was my doorway into what has become my passion.

  By 2003, Byberry was overrun by a large n
umber of regular visitors, as well as “newbies” pouring in every day. Some remained loyal “Byberrians,” and others couldn’t wait to get out. It was an environment unlike anything else. People’s lives connected through the experience of going to “the berry” religiously. It was a place with no law, no church, no last call and no admittance fee. Trespassers took full advantage of the un-governed metropolis. The connecting hallways provided easy passage between all the buildings, and the police rarely attempted to pursue trespassers. It was a place the city and state wished would just disappear.

  In March, my friend Will and I were exploring W-3 building. I was taking photos of the graffiti-covered staff auditorium. Then, from the hallway came the faint sound of broken glass under someone’s feet. Will and I stopped in our tracks. Standing in the middle aisle, I stared out into the hallway, not blinking. The reflection of the setting sun shone into the marble-lined lobby at the end of the dark hallway, about twenty-five feet away. The gleaming reflection of sunlight on the marble wall danced around as the trees outside filtered its flow. The crunching got louder, carrying muddled voices with it. Someone was coming down the hallway. Girls were laughing. We avoided the other visitors, but it wasn’t long before I met literally hundreds of explorers. After that night, the last of my fear diminished, and in its place, my obsession grew.

  I began visiting Byberry on a weekly basis, collecting artifacts and putting pieces together. The exploration of the buildings became like a real-life video game to me, and I started getting good at it. I began getting answers to my questions, and the bizarre abandoned snake pit began to make sense as a working physical plant. After half a decade of a truly unique and incomparable experience, I am proud to call myself a “Byberrian.” The times I spent within its walls were some of the best I’ve ever had. But in March 2006, the Westrum Development Corporation purchased the 106-acre Byberry site. Pressured from Somerton residents to end the “Byberry problem,” Westrum moved quickly. In April, the “Berry” was frequented daily by the regulars, but when June began, things halted. By June 7, there was a chain-link fence surrounding the property. And not a week later, truckloads of trees and other natural growth clinging to the buildings were removed and discarded.