On a late October afternoon, I arrive at Harlem Valley State Hospital to learn what happened to my grandmother. The windows are covered with rusted bars; ivy creeps up the crumbling brick façade. Wind gusts send dried leaves whirling around the yards.
The hospital had opened as a state mental asylum in 1924. Its charter called for “the care and treatment of the insane.” The campus was huge – at one point 80 buildings sat on almost 900 acres of land. At its peak, it housed 5000 patients.
As I walk up a pathway of cracked stones, my hands are shaking. I’d begun this journey years earlier.
My grandmother’s psychiatric breakdown had long been a mystery.