Essex County Hospitals History

ESSEX COUNTY HOSPITAL CENTER
125 FAIRVIEW AVENUE
CEDAR GROVE, NJ 07009

PSYCHIATRIC HOSPITALS

Beds - Total (Total number of beds in a facility, including those in non-Participating or non-licensed areas): 400

Beds - Total certified (Number of beds in Medicare and/or Medicaid certified areas within a facility): 400

Physicians (The number of full-time equivalent physicians employed by a provider): 23.50

Accreditation effective date (The effective date of the current period of accreditation by the joint commission on accreditation of health care organizations (jcaho) or the american osteopathic association (aoa)): Feb 1998

Accreditation expiration date (The expiration date of the current period of accreditation by the joint committee on accreditation of health care organizations (jcaho) or the american osteopathic association (aoa)): Feb 2001

Accreditation indicator (Indicates the organization that is responsible for the accreditation of the provider): JCAHO

Clia - Hosp lab id #1 (Number assigned to a hospital laboratory licensed in accordance with the clinical laboratory improvement act (clia)): 31D0941369

Current survey ever accredited (Indicates if this provider was an accredited hospital anytime during the current survey): Yes

Current survey ever non-Accred (Indicates if this provider was a non-Accredited hospital anytine during the current survey): No

Current survey ever swingbed (Indicates if this provider was a swingbed hospital anytime during the current survey): No

Date of validation survey (Date a validation survey is performed by the state agency in a jcah or aoa accredited hospital): Apr 1998

Dieticians (Number of full-time equivalent dieticians employed by a facility): 1

Licensed pract/vocat nurses (Number of full-time equivalent licensed practical or vocational nurses employed by a facility): 32

Medical school affiliation (The type of affiliation that a hospital may have with a medical school): NO AFFILIATION

Occupational therapists (The number of full time equivalent occupational therapists employed by a provider): 1

Other personnel (The number of full-time equivalent other salaried personnel employed by a facility): 499

Participating code (y,n) (This code indicates whether a provider is participating in the Medicaid or Medicare program): Yes

Program participation (Indicates if the provider participates in Medicare, Medicaid, or both programs): MEDICARE AND MEDICAID

Registered nurses (The number of full-time equivalent registered professional nurses employed by a provider): 103

Resident program approved by ada (Indicates if the resident program at a hospital is approved by the american dental association): No

Resident program approved by ama (Indicates if the resident program at a hospital is approved by the american medical association): No

Resident program approved by aoa (Indicates if the resident program at a hospital is approved by the american osteopathic association): No

Resident program approved by other (Indicates if the resident program at a hospital is approved by other professional organizations): No

Srv: dental (Indicates how dental services are provided): PROVIDED BY STAFF

Srv: dietary (Indicates how dietary services are provided): PROVIDED BY STAFF

Srv: laboratory (clinical) (Indicates how clinical laboratory services are provided in a hospital): PROVIDED UNDER ARRANGEMENT

Srv: occupational therapy (Indicates how occupational therapy services are provided): PROVIDED BY STAFF

Srv: pharmacy (Indicates how pharmacy services are provided): PROVIDED UNDER ARRANGEMENT

Srv: physical therapy (Indicates how physical therapy services are provided): PROVIDED UNDER ARRANGEMENT

Srv: psychiatric (Indicates how psychiatric services are provided by a hospital): PROVIDED BY STAFF

Srv: radiology (diagnostic) (Indicates how diagnostic radiology services are provided by a hospital): PROVIDED UNDER ARRANGEMENT

Srv: rehabilitation (Indicates how rehabilitation services are provided by a hospital): PROVIDED BY STAFF

Srv: social (Indicates how social services are provided): PROVIDED BY STAFF

Srv: speech pathology (Indicates how speech pathology services are provided): PROVIDED UNDER ARRANGEMENT

Swing bed indicator (Indicates if a hospital provides swing bed services - Beds can be used for either hospital or long term care services): No

Type of facility (Indicates the category which represents the type of facility): PSYCHIATRIC

Medical social workers (Number of full-time equivalent medical social workers employed by a hospital or hospice): 18

Compliance: status (Indicates if a provider or supplier is in compliance with program requirements): IN COMPLIANCE

Current survey date (The date of the health or life safety code survey, whichever is later. the "official" survey date for the provider): Jul 1998

Eligibility code (Indicates if a facility is eligible to participate in the Medicare and/or Medicaid programs): ELIGIBLE TO PARTICIPATE

Participation date (The date a facility is first approved to provide Medicare and/or Medicaid services): Jun 1990

If you keep walking past the towers and follow the road down the side of the mountain you will find a semi abandoned mental hospital. The Essex County Hospital Center (Overbrook) located on Fairview Ave. in Verona, NJ stands infected with the same disease that killed the sanatorium. This three hundred and fifty acre hospital has 50 buildings that are still in use and 10 abandoned buildings yearning to be explored. All the buildings on the property date back to the early 1900's.

Underneath the grounds of the hospital lies miles upon miles of underground tunnels. These tunnels connect all the buildings including the ones still being used to house mental patients. You can access these tunnels by going into the basement of any one of the abandoned buildings, but be careful maintenance workers still use them on a daily basis. These tunnels are used to supply the entire complex with hot and cold water, heat and electricity. In addition to tunnels many of the buildings are connected by shared basements that are filled with decaying hospital equipment and old patient records.

The future of Overbrook looks to be very promising for a lover of abandoned buildings. The hospital center has become outdated as a medical facility and even the working buildings have fallen into such a state of disrepair that it would be economically unsound to remodel. Instead the proposed plan is to relocate the patients to a hospital in Newark and close Overbrook forever. The plan will go into effect within the next two to three years and the buildings will stand uninhabited at last.

However, unlike the sanatorium which was tucked away from main roads and the prying eyes of the taxpayers, Overbrook stands obtrusively in the public eye. It is for this reason that Overbrook will not be forgotten like the sanatorium and the buildings will inevitably fall within a few months of there desertion (hopefully i am wrong about this). The hospital property has many attractive elements that make it a prime commodity including 3 working wells that pump 2-300,000 gallons of water per day from aquifers 400-600 feet below the surface, an attractive location and a very handsome price tag. When the patients go so will the buildings so now is your chance to enjoy.

I used to make coffee at an NA meeting in the Mentally Ill Chemically Addicted (MICA) Building. Those idiots gave me the key to the hospital and I took full advantage of it. The MICA unit was only used during the day, so I would go there at night and skate around the whole place on my roller blades. Just picture skating through a huge mental hospital in the middle of the night with only the light of the exit signs to guide you. Unfortunately I lost the key but I noticed that sometimes in the summer they keep the windows open in some of the offices so it’s easy to just climb in.

Overbrook hospital has a liberal policy with it’s patients and many of them have access to the grounds. There are no fences and if you want you can even strike up a conversation with a patient. If dealing directly with insane people is not your cup of tea you can always duck into one of the abandoned buildings and take a few pictures for me to post on this site.

the first time i saw the sanatorium, it truly scared me. it was a hot day in the middle of summer and i remember the smell of lilacs hung in the air like some sweet poison.

i had been building a fort in the woods with two of my friends and our quest for building materials led us to the top of a steep hill where we discovered a decaying road abandoned in the middle of the forest. beside the road there were mounds and mounds of old garbage and even though there was plenty of building materials for us to use on our fort we were curious about the road and kept walking.

the road led us to two huge water towers and beyond it, a massive building covered in spray paint. my heart began to pound in my tiny pre-pubescent chest but i couldn’t stop my feet from walking closer.

a swastika spray painted on a brick column with the words, "welcome aryan warriors," greeted us, and i viewed for the first time the place that would shape my childhood. my initial impression was one of sadness and i couldn’t help but wonder what could have happened here to make them want to forget this place.

the creaking of the rusty door hinges echoed through the entrance hall, and as i stepped through the door the cold hit me. the hairs rose on the back of my neck and goose bumps shot across my arms. my friends were scared too, but we couldn’t help but go further.

as time passed the sanatorium became my refuge from the civilized world around me. i explored every inch of the buildings andi learned the layout like the back of my hand. i never had any worries about getting caught because i knew that no pig would ever follow me inside. i loved the fear i felt every time i turned a corner, but most of all i appreciated the solitude and relentless silence. i needed to know the story behind this forbidden place so i took a little trip to the library.

the main sanatorium complex was built in 1902 as a shelter for abandoned girl’s, but the facility was only open for a short time because there were not enough girls to justify the cost of running the massive building. the few girls that did reside at the shelter where relocated and the building stood vacant. in 1906 there was 842 deaths in the city of newark caused by tuberculoses and the city needed to find a place to keep these incurables, so in 1908 the girl’s shelter reopened its doors as the newark city home for consumptives and became a place to die for hundreds of tuberculoses victims. as the number of patients grew so did the buildings. 11 new buildings (including two still standing today) were completed in 1922. at the time the hospital, which was later named overbrook, offered state of the art care for patients who suffered from tb but the advancement of medical technology was slow and the patients took every strained breath as if it were their last. before the main building was torn down i actually found the operating rooms, prep rooms and the morgue. it was always weird to stand in these rooms and imagine the gruesome scenes and the horrible suffering that had taken place there so many years before.

it took 44 years for the suffering at overbrook to finally end. in 1952, a drug called streptomycin was introduced to tb patients with great success and proved to be a cure for tb. 18 years later, in 1970, overbrook hospital officially ceased operation and was left to die.

just a few weeks before it was put to rest experts declared the building as "structurally sound and fit to remodel," but no one stood in protest the day it fell. why? because no one wanted to remember the horrors that took place there and no one could stand to face the fact that some wounds never heal.

i found the sanatorium in the summer of 1987 at the age of ten. all the buildings were standing and i took full advantage of the opportunity to decimate them as much as possible until it fell in august of 1993. an arsonist's dream and an unlimited canvas for spray paint, the building was for me an ideal place to grow up.

i remember throwing my empty southern comfort bottle off the seven-story roof and almost hitting some kid in the head, countless times crouching in the dark hiding from cops, throwing things out the windows and raging fires that always got way out of control. i had discovered a world with no rules and my mind began to blossom.

recently i watched verona’s 4^th of july fireworks from the top of one of the red buildings which were used as a garage, a laundry, and a boiler room/workshop. there are many interesting things in the remaining buildings. bring your flashlight. there are a few entrances to the tunnels located in and around the red buildings and one that connects the farthest red building to the basement of one of the hospital buildings. keep your eye’s peeled for patient records they are strewn about in both of the remaining hospital buildings.

my advice would be to bring a camera because these structures are scheduled for demolition. exactly when the buildings will fall is up to the bureaucrats, but you can bet that someday soon it will become a golf course or a housing development. soon the sanatorium will truly be forgotten and a moment in time will have passed

the buildings that remain are all haunted places, not by ghosts or demons, but by a cold gray legacy of suffering that will end only when the last building is in the earth. infected by the same hopelessness and condemned to the same long hard death as it’s former occupants, the remaining buildings await their fate.

as it should, the death of the sanatorium saddens me. it marks the end to my childhood and leaves me with fleeting memories of a freedom that i can never hope to recapture. however, even though i mourn it’s loss i find myself laughing at the twisted irony of its demise. now i am only left to wonder…when will the rest of the world be so beautiful?

The history of The Essex Mountain Sanatorium begins with The Newark City Home, which was established in Verona New Jersey in 1873 on property which is today the grounds of the Verona High School. The purpose of the home was to both reform the children of Newark who "were treading the downward path" and to serve as an orphanage. On the evening of January 9, 1900, the main building of the home was destroyed by fire. As a locomotive passed in the vicinity, the conductor sounded his whistle to warn the residents of the burning building. There were no casualties.

Newark City Home c. 1876

After the fire, the trustees had decided that the whole institution should be changed from the congregate massing of children in one building, to the "cottage system", a system in which boys and girls are segregated and children are grouped into "families", with each "family" consisting of not more than 50 children. Under the new system, a separate cottage would be needed for the girls. Later that year, a site roughly a quarter-mile northwest of the boys' cottages was chosen for its location, and money was appropriated for its construction.

Newark City Home for Girls c. 1902

The cornerstone for the "Newark City Home for Girls" was laid on the crest of the second Orange Mountain (known today as Second Mountain) in Verona, the highest point in Essex County, on October 30, 1900. The building was completed and opened in January of 1902, but the number of delinquent girls was small and in most cases homes for them could be secured in private families. Four short years later in 1906, due to this decreasing enrollment, the girls cottage was phased out and the building stood vacant.

In 1906, there were at least 3,000 cases of Tuberculosis in the city of Newark and 842 deaths from the disease. Without adequate accommodations for the T.B. sick, The Board of Health was helpless to cope with the disease unless proper facilities were provided. Through the efforts of two Montclair women, Mrs. E.A. Prieth and Miss Mary Wilson, a proposal was introduced to establish a sanatorium in the now vacant girls cottage. Although there were no legal obstructions to the turning over of the girls cottage for a sanatorium, the plan drew strong opposition from the citizens of Verona. A campaign was started to keep the sanatorium out. Threats were made that an injunction would be sought in the courts to stop the opening.

Before any direct action could be taken by the protesters, the first few patients were admitted into the building under the cover of darkness at midnight of a gray November day in 1907. To evict the physician and his patients would require more court proceedings and these were never pursued. Those first few patients of the "Newark City Home for Consumptives" did not stay long however, as extensive repairs were needed to the building which had deteriorated during its vacancy. A hurried remodeling job was done and on January 21, 1908, the sanatorium received the first 2 patients of the 129 who were to be treated there during its initial year. (for a more detailed account of Mrs. Prieth's and Miss Wilson's efforts, read "Four Women and a Sanatorium" - Click Here)

City Home for Consumptives c. 1907

Over the next decade, Tuberculosis gradually became to be considered a county problem. Legislation followed which placed responsibility for the care of the T.B. sick with the county and the Newark Board of Health suggested in 1917, that the Board of Chosen Freeholders take over the institution and enlarge it to handle the needs of the 4,012 persons suffering from Tuberculosis in Essex County's 21 communities. After acquisition of the hospital in 1917, the county initiated a massive building campaign and immediately instituted the erection of eleven new buildings. These buildings were completed and opened to patients in 1922.

Hospital Construction c. 1930

Construction continued and the last major buildings to be added to the site, the Hospital Building, which was the largest building of the complex, and the Community Building, which housed the Auditorium and Chapel, were completed in late 1930. The original unit of the complex, the girls cottage, now served as the Administration Building. Coincidental with the addition of these new buildings, the sanatorium grounds were increased from 32 acres to nearly 200 acres, a large part of it being farmland where the institution would grow its own vegetables. The farm was worked by prisoners of the penitentiary in North Caldwell.

For its time, the sanatorium was a state of the art facility. During its years of operation it boasted of a 50% recovery rate and was regarded as one of the finest treatment centers in the nation, if not the world. Its location on the crest of the Second Mountain, with its pure air and water, was considered the Colorado Springs of the east and second only to Denver for beneficial results in the treatment of Tuberculosis. In addition to treating patients sent from all portions of the county, the sanatorium became a haven for World War 1 veterans that had suffered lung injuries during the war.

Through the first half of the twentieth century, great strides were taken in the treatment of Tuberculosis. With the pasteurization of milk and development of the B.C.G. vaccine by the French, science slowly began to gain ground on the disease. With the discovery of Streptomycin, an antibiotic drug that essentially cured Tuberculosis, in the early 1950's, the number of patients at the sanatorium began to slowly decline. By the 1970's, as a result of the decline, many of the sanatorium's buildings were no longer in use and the county struggled to find ways in which to utilize them.

Essex Mountain Sanatorium c. 1952

The sanatorium's vacant wards were used to care for the overflow of mental patients from nearby Overbrook, the psychiatric hospital located on Fairview Ave. in Cedar Grove, while the Medical Staff Building was used to house its doctors and their families. Turning Point, a drug and alcohol rehabilitation center, was established in The Male Employee Home in 1975. Also, much of the sanatorium's vast farmland was used as a compost site for Essex County.

Essex Mountain Sanatorium c. 1987

It was science's victory over Tuberculosis that inevitably sealed the sanatorium's fate. Ultimately, the two were hopelessly linked. The eradication of T.B. meant the end of a need for the sanatorium. In 1977, the last patient was released and the sanatorium officially closed its doors and ceased all operations. On December 1, 1982 the county locked the gates to the hilltop property and completely abandoned the complex. The Essex Mountain Sanatorium, now alone and forgotten, sat idle on top of its mountain. And it waited. Five years later, we would arrive.

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