Sunday, March 30, 2014

The Essex County Isolation Hospital





I remember passing by the Essex County Isolation Hospital as a child. By then the campus only had a few buildings left, but the one that caught my eye was the 8 story children's building which stood proudly across the large lawn at the corner of Franklin and Belleville. The structure was quite imposing , made of yellow brick and limestone. The building was still in use, or at least half of it was, by the Garden State Cancer Research Center. As soon as I got home, I researched everything I could about the hospital.





Buildings started to show up on this campus as early as 1905. These structures were designed by the Newark firm of Hurd & Sutton, the principal architects responsible for the Essex County Overbrook Hospital. The county needed a hospital to take care of numerous infectious diseases that were infecting residents of Essex. They already had a psychiatric hospital as well as a tuberculosis sanatorium in what was then the countryside, but the isolation hospital had to be built near the city of Newark.





Before long, the campus was becoming more and more crowded. In addition, the children's ward was insufficient for the demand. In 1929, the crown jewel of the campus was built. The towering edifice was occupied before long, and functioned for decades before the dwindling population of the campus forced the buildings to close.




After the demolition of the Essex Mountain Sanatorium, the county set their eyes on the vacant complex of buildings in Belleville for condominiums. After 3 years of remediation and securing the proper credentials, the county demolished most of the brick buildings in the back of the campus. Two structures in the back of the campus were spared, and renovated into office buildings, and the children's building was occupied by the Garden State Cancer Research Center. Well, half of it was.




The group occupied the administration area and the right wing, leaving the left wing to rot. After a friend of mine posted some photos of the interior, I had to go see the place for myself. After finding a way inside, I was taken aback by the peeling paint and rusting hospital equipment. This was one of the first buildings I ever wandered into, so my friend and I spent almost an hour cautiously walking around. As I mentioned before, the building was still partially active. There were disused floors on the active sides, but they were all totally stripped.




It didn't take very long to finish seeing the wing, so we headed out. We were determined to come back to the hospital at some point, but I didn't get my chance for a while. The cancer center declared bankruptcy in 2011, and was forced to vacate the building. So now, once again, the entire building was empty. Plans were made to visit the building soon after it's closure. Unfortunately we got busy, and a number of break ins and fires kept the building sealed for the longest time. The building eventually sold for 3.7 million dollars. I knew it was time to go back, before I lost my chance forever.




It took a visit from a friend from Idaho to get me back to the hospital. The new owners went around and sealed up the building, but a door they missed swung open we tried it. It was bittersweet walking through the building, seeing all the vandalism that wasn't there during our last visit. After spending some time on the roof, watching the police pull somebody over below, we decided to head out.



After posting some of my shots on an online urban exploration forum, a former patient (who had found the site through photos somebody else took) began to tell the stories of terror and abuse he was subjected to at the hospital. He even tried to escape the hospital at one point, to no avail. Hearing him tell his stories sent a chill down my spine; I had walked the same hallways he is talking about, but without the fear he experienced.




A few weeks after my second visit inside, I decided to drive by the hospital to see what had come of the new ownership. I was surprised and a little saddened to see the entire hospital sealed up, with full dumpsters sitting in the driveway. As I watched the owner toss items out of the building and into the dumpsters below, I felt a calm come over me, knowing that the building was going to be seeing new life, as opposed to all of the other county owned properties which ended up in a landfill. The hospital is being transformed, like everything else around here, into condos. Only time will tell what happens to the building now, I can only hope it is kind.






71 comments:

  1. I always wondered about this building! interesting...

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    1. I live in bloomfield and this building always scared me. Then i saw a beautiful mind and thought it was beautiful.

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    2. Lol I have lived nearly blocks away from this hospital my whole life and never knew about it till now

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    3. Cool! Me too

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  2. It's on the corner of Franklin Ave and BELLEVILLE AVE, not Bellvue
    I went to school across the strett for 7 years

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    1. I am sure by spell/grammar checking someone you would spell check yourself too...just saying

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    2. Thank you for the correction.

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    3. Where exactly is this place?

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    4. Does anyone remember a place called the Belleville Shelter for Children? It was open during the early 70s.

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    5. Yes, I remember that place. It was horrible.

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    6. It Link by tunnels to the main hospital. I work there in 1969 and 1970 I was in the kitchen. It was hospital for the elderly. It was very, very cold. It was for very, very poor people and petite's. No visitors. It was a sad place but for a young girl. I was a light for some people. I'd like to thank anyway, but it was the very imposing building. And I did work there a full-time in the summer and just helping feed folks in. A different floors

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  3. Dear AbandonedNJ
    Hi - great job gathering these lost bits of history. If you could, please email me at address below. I'd like to connect and ask you a couple of related questions. Thanks, Steve
    steve@deepimage.info

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  4. Thanks. I feel like I have an opportunity to say something here that might encourage those abused here to speak up, yet nothing comes to mind.

    Look online there is at least one other seeking justice.

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  5. Not sure why but my previous comment today posted or seemed to and is no longer here.
    I am the person who's story ABNJ referred to sending a chill down his spine. My post said I was at a loss for words and encouraged anyone who was abused here look online as they will find at least one other person also seeking justice.
    The name of the place I was in out behind this hospital was "The Essex County Emergency Children's Shelter".
    There was also a ward for disabled kids in the hospital, I think 4th floor, that was run by a "private" firm for the County. The main hospital building was only partially occupied since the 50's maybe earlier and the open part was used as the County Geriatric Center until it closed in the 70's. This is why some pics of the place look like very old decay and some look like its only a couple decades since abandonment.
    Weird note; One of the guys who bought it is the son of a guy who was a buddy of my dad.

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    1. Born and raised in Nutley NJ ,the next town over.I was a patient in this place in 1953 with all the symptoms of polio, but 2 months later it found that I didn’t have it. During that Era in our history, they didn’t take chances, they isolated ! Over the many years that I have revisited Nutley I have drove past this landmark, and thought of all the children that past Through it’s doors. At 73 yrs old I know I never want to see the inside of that place ever again. I can still remember like it was just yesterday getting the polio vaccine, a sugar cube with a pink medicine on it.

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  6. My father spent many years as a patient there iv'e been inside countless times.

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  7. This place looks haunted

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  8. This should be next episode of Ghost Adventures......

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  9. This used to be known as the Essex County Geriatric Center as recently as 1981. It became the County geriatric hospital in 1955ish. It is also called SOHO. I'm not sure of why.
    Anyone who was there as a child in the children's shelter it was out back where the condos are. The proper name for it in the 60's early 70's was "The Essex County Emergency Children's Shelter". It was not a nice place to be for me. Later it became the "Center for Abused and Abandoned Children" also still run buy the County/DYFS until it closed in 1981.
    There was a ward on the 4th floor of the main hospital if I recall correctly where disabled children resided in one wing they had a few large rooms, until??? These are children with conditions that live at home in the family now. Until the 1980's it was common for doctors to encourage families to institutionalize disabled children.

    If you were there look online at least one other person is looking for people who were there.

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    1. Prior to that. I had the good fortune to work with North Jersey Developmental Center, Totowa, NJ which was closed a few years back. A residential institution whose residents at the time, late 90's celebrating birthdays, 80+ yrs, had been there possibly at the ages of 4+. A place riddled with phenomenal Persons of varying cultural, social, economic & financial heritage. I always wondered as to the why a Medical Group has not considered purchasing.

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    2. Prior to that. I had the good fortune to work with North Jersey Developmental Center, Totowa, NJ which was closed a few years back. A residential institution whose residents at the time, late 90's celebrating birthdays, 80+ yrs, had been there possibly at the ages of 4+. A place riddled with phenomenal Persons of varying cultural, social, economic & financial heritage. I always wondered as to the why a Medical Group has not considered purchasing.

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    3. Prior to that. I had the good fortune to work with North Jersey Developmental Center, Totowa, NJ which was closed a few years back. A residential institution whose residents at the time, late 90's celebrating birthdays, 80+ yrs, had been there possibly at the ages of 4+. A place riddled with phenomenal Persons of varying cultural, social, economic & financial heritage. I always wondered as to the why a Medical Group has not considered purchasing.

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    4. My sister went to a day program here in the 1970s she is mentally handicapped, I believe the program was called Garden School. I was really young at the time but remember vaguely going to the school for holiday parties.

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    5. i remember this place, me and my siblings lived here for many years as a child, we use to go through a tunnel to the hospital to eat. its so many buried memories that I have about this shelter.

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    6. I was in Soho isolation hospital with my younger sister I was born in 53 I believe I was three or four I had whooping cough along with my baby sister we have nothing but a fond memory. Later on we ended up at the children shelter due to circumstances beyond our control also only fond memories but that was the 50s things might’ve gone downhill after that.

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    7. I came down with pneumonia when I was 3 yrs old and taken by ambulance from E.O. to this hospital. I only remember being in a room with a large window facing hall and seeing my parents on the other side . Was in an oxygen tent.

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  10. I remember my first rotation in nursing school I had to go on Fridays to what was called the Essex County Geriatric Center. I remember the cold feeling inside. It was dreary and dark and I do remember it did not help when it rained everytime we went for out rotation. The types of people we worked with were those that were pretty much done except for them being able to open there eyes and starte. I knew that that was not what I wold do for life. I did not know there was children's ward and today on 10.5 they were talking about abandoned buildings and it brought me back to the early days of nursing school.

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    1. I worked in that main bldg at 17 abd 18 very sad indeed...sad its rebuilt however its a dud because the town never figured logistics of yraffic flow only one small st on carpenter st out.of there. how dumb. What a waste

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  11. DG Hughes,
    The children's ward was there in the 60's. I was one of the Shelter kids and you'd be shocked to know what happened to me. Take a look at the Belleville, NJ Topix page you should recognise the title of the blog.
    I'll post a direct link but in case it i s not allowed I mentioned the webpage it is located on.

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  12. Oops, here is the link DG HUghes,
    http://www.topix.com/forum/city/belleville-nj/TV02FNMT3GE8K208B

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  13. Absolutely horrific story at that link. Always suspected there were bad things going on there when I was a boy in the late 50's early 60's. I'd thought it was to isolate TB cases,,, never knew the children's part of the story! OMG!

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  14. Thank You for reading that Anon 2-6-15.
    I finally got some honest feedback telling me it was "very, very, very difficult to read and you have no ability to tell a narrative".
    I should describe it as a journal of what I was remembering and thinking on the date of the post.
    The Children's Shelter was not part of the hospital but the whole property was owned by the County and had several county agencies on it. The hospital had the County Geriatric Center and a separate ward for special needs children run by a "Private Agency" which got its money from the government. Most of those children would stay at home today. Then there was the protective custody children's shelter which I think now, was not run by DYFS in the time I was there but by whatever agency preceded it, CPS possibly.
    Some of the people who abused me, three young men, orderlies from that ward for special needs children, were how it was possible to bring me into the hospital to ECT me without people noticing. They often came down to the Shelter on break time under the pretense of modeling good adult males for the kiddies. I never saw anything good in them, they abused the children's need for affection to manipulate them by with holding it until the child did what they wanted or being overly affectionate to get the child off guard to do something for them.
    I have seen stories of good experiences from people who were there then both adult and child but that is my experience of my time there and I expect the ECT's are why it is so hard to find more like myself. there is probably a lot of shame based culture still holding people back as well at least that is what I get when I speak to people in the area by phone.
    Anyway those children ate and bathed in the hospital otherwise stayed out back in the buildings that were where the condos are now.

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  15. I came across your site because I found that my great grandfather and a great uncle both died at the Essex County Hospital for Contagious Diseases - which I guess became the Essex County Isolation Hospital. One died in 1913, the other in 1929 so well before your time in the Children's Shelter part. Very interesting reading. Thank you for the page.

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    1. Does any one know where the records from the Hospital went?
      Anon (4/16/2015) I too have a great grand father that died there in 1916. I have no information on him, and I was wondering if the records had names of nearest kin, ect. Anyone know? email me cworth 2288 at MSN dot com please!

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    2. I would love to know the answer to this question as well if anyone ever answered you.

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    3. There is a State agency that tracks old records from when Hospitals shut down.

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    4. Try calling the State Archives in Trenton and ask them about NJDARM
      I think that is a branch associated with saving medical records from hospital closures. I tried to get my records from this place with no success but they are trying to prevent me from proving the serious abuse I endured.

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  16. @anon 4-16-15
    The Isolation Hospital building in these pics was built in 1929. The Shelter was out behind it and I think some of those buildings may have been part of the original hospital which started in 1905. I am not the blogger when he/she posts the B icon will be next to the post.

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  17. OOps I may have been wrong about the B icon. I have seen the blogger of this sit epost and I recall it was clear it was the blogger posting and not just a viewer.

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  18. I believe this was used as a location for the film "A Beautiful Mind" used as the exterior building complex for what is referred to in the movie as ‘Wheeler Defense Laboratory’ at MIT.

    http://www.movie-locations.com/movies/b/Beautiful-Mind-locations.html#.VYbg6PlVhBc

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  19. Just saw this today. Its from June 18th. http://www.northjersey.com/opinion/opinion-editorials/a-piece-of-history-in-township-could-be-preserved-1.1358261

    I guess they intend on saving the building. Heck I had thought they were repointing the bricks months ago. I saw pics of the scaffold up one of the corners.

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  20. News of progress on plans to reuse the site. This plan intends to keep the building.
    http://www.northjersey.com/news/belleville-board-approves-proposal-to-revamp-old-hospital-1.1372458?page=all

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  21. This is great news not only for the community of Belleville, but for all of us fighting to see these structures re-integrated back into the community.

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  22. Are there any people looking who were abused in the Children's Shelter out back? Or taken from there to the Hospital to be abused? Or do you have unusual holes in your memory of the place? There is a link above to a Topix blog by a former resident. Speak up the perps are still alive we can get them held to account!

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  23. Is this the Essex County Geriatric Center in Belleville, NJ? If it is I did my nursing rotation there in 1980. I went there every Friday and made the remark that it also rained every time we had to go there and that did not help the drab feeling inside. I was in a wing working with patients who were there long term and this is before they kept you in hospital and then transferred patients to nursing homes. Anyway, the halls were a drab color green and the lighting was dull......not like your hospitals today. I remember even the cafeteria was eerie and the rain made it worse. I often wondered what happened to some that I was able to take care of.

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  24. My mother was a polio victim, in isolation there, from October 1954 until April 1955. She was in an iron lung. When they admitted her, they wrote out her death cert but didn't date it. To their surprise, she survived and lived on until January 1990.

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    1. My mother was there around the same time for TB. Thank God she made it out also. I was a young boy around 5or6 not sure but did they allow visitors.

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  25. The Topix page link above has been removed from the Topix site. The admin there did so after I asked why I was having difficulty posting my latest post. Apparently the lesson is to not ask. shrug

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  26. I was at this hospital in 1951 diagnosed with polio. I remember being placed in an isolation ward with windows and talking to my parents through phones. I remained in the ward for the entire summer, but was eventually released (non paralytic), They used the Sister Kenny treatment on us (two other boys in my ward), Scalding hot packs wrapped around our legs every day, it was torture. Not fond memories of the place.

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    1. My mother was in there around the same time for TB. I was 5 at the time, I wasn't sure if they let us in he room. However after what you said they obviously did not. Thanks for the answer to the question that was I was curious about.

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  27. I lived in Bloomfield in the late 50's. I went to Newark State College (Kean U.) and worked for Essex County as an ambulance driver at that hospital for a couple summers.

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  28. My father was the Medical Director of SoHo from Where he began his medical career in the 1930s till his death in1977.
    The first 6 years of my life were spent living there. Literally
    There is a house on the front right corner of the hill. That’s where we lived.
    I spent my childhood running around the halls with free reign.
    There are tunnels that connected all the buildings, the nursing school, orphanage , fire house etc. there was even a heliport in back.
    When I saw the film A Beautiful Mind I did not know they had done some filming there.
    There is a scene when they walk down a hall into an office with mathematical equations all over the wall. A chill went down my spine as that room was my fathers office almost completely intact as he was the final occupant they must have left it as it was all those years.
    I’ve stumbled upon thus article years after it was penned, but appreciate the nostalgia.
    Ralph A. Ford, Jr.

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  29. Hi - Strange...somehow my husband and I were talking about social isolation in the age of Covid-19 and I remembered the isolation hospital for polio victims that we used to see on the way from Nutley to the trolley to Newark. I kind of remembered the name SoHo, but could not quite believe that I was on target given the much more famous Soho across the Hudson River, but working my way through all these comments I saw that someone actually did mention the name SoHo. Felt vindicated - I was unaware of all the other uses and abuses associated with the place, but to a small child it was scary enough to think that you could get a disease that was so terrible that they would send you away to an isolation hospital. That said, when I was little, the building was sitting impressively behind a huge lawn on a hill.
    But back to the name SoHo - Does anyone here know why it was called SoHo?

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    1. I believe because that was the section of Belleville that the hospital was in.

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  30. My Aunt died there in 1932 from scarlet fever. She was only 17 years old.

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  31. is this building still up or has it been demolished ?

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  32. I was a patient at soho hospital in 1948 being treated for polio that settled in my left calf. I was given treatments from the sister Kenny foundation & walked out of the hospital approx. 6 or 7 weeks later.

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  33. Difficult to write this but I'm a "Shelter kid" too. "Class" of 1974. This place was as horrible an experience for small children as others here have said. Truly awful memories of my shelter experience haunt me to this day. Never thought I'd ever see online comments from others who had similar terrible experiences from this horrible place. Glad to know I'm not alone, but very sad to know so many others endured this place too. A few years ago when this place was abandoned I'd hoped it would just be knocked down. Even without the context its such an ugly imposing building. I'm sorry to hear its going to be resurrected as "luxury" condos. There's not enough money in the world to make me live in such a negatively haunted place.

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  34. I worked at the hospital as an ambulance driver in the late 50's when I was in college.

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  35. As a child I had scarlet fever when there no vaccine, antibiotic or medicine to cure it. It was highly contagious (still is) when a young doctor (after many wrong diagnosis) at St Michaels’ determined I had scarlet fever. The next day the health dept sent an ambulance for me, wrapped me from head to toe in white sheets, took me and my paper dolls to the “isolation hospital” or SoHo, and quarantined my family; i was not yet age 5. It was very traumatic. Although only the janitor and nurse were allowed in my room, my mother snuck in anyway. My door was usually locked. I recall a specific incidence when I heard kids playing and I went to the door which was open and started walking down the hall towards the kids. Suddenly the nurses were screaming my name and scooped me up into her arms back to my room. These kids had heart disease, tuberculosis and other contagious diseases-I could have killed them or they me. She explained but I still frightened. Then, there was the time my young Caucasian nurse tried to comb this little Black child’s hair. She and my mother had a good laugh about that. Upon being released, the dr said I had to leave my toys because of the contagions from the disease..
    Thank u to the young doctor at St. Michael’s and the SoHo staff for making a little girl feel safe and saving my life. Finally, stuck in my memory is how beautiful the grounds were. There were bench’s and gasoline lights and lots of green grass. I couldn’t wait to play i it, but of course I never did

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  36. I used to work here at "SoHo" as a porter during the summers of 1968 and 1969. At the time it was known as the "Essex County Geriatrics Center"....but, in truth, it was just a dumping place for indigent sick or disabled people. It was a very sad place to work each day because you could see real human beings left alone, not loved, abandoned by their families, with a staff that was greatly lacking in compassion.

    In the basement were the old operating rooms, moth-balled and locked....but you could look through the door windows and imagine what they must have been like 40 years ago. There were also 4 iron lungs in the basement corridor, I remember.

    Once, I was assigned to help a nurse take a dead body out to the morgue (a small building out in back of the facility). Now THAT was a creepy place if ever there was one! Townhouses stand on that site now.

    From the days when it was an isolation hospital (its original purpose) there were small sinks in the corridor of each ward -- a sink in between each room. Even though it was then just a geriatrics center, we were all obligated to wash our hands when coming out of one room before entering the next one. Germicidal soap was provided for this purpose. I must have washed my hands 20 times a day in the course of performing my porter duties.

    I remember a woman, only 57 yrs. old, who was there with MS. She was very nice, and we'd have some warm conversations sometimes. She was one of the lucky ones -- her family would come to visit on Sundays (visiting day). Almost no one else had visitors....ever. I felt really sorry for them, and I would even come in on Sundays -- even if it was my day off -- and visit with them so that they would not feel so lonely. And I remember a nice lady named Nettie Bowers who was on my ward. She was 108 yrs. old. She was blind, and mostly deaf, but you could still communicate with her if you spoke loud enough.

    And then there was a nice gentleman named "Frank" on my ward, who had glaucoma and had to be treated with this horrible smelling ointment in his eyes each morning. Frank and I became good friends during the summers that I worked there. I remember that he had a hobby of working with copper plate, embossing different pictures and scenes with a hand-held stylus. Frank's copper embossings were amazingly beautiful....and once, he even gave me one of "The Last Supper" to take home to my parents.

    The hospital was a very sad place....and it was almost as if the walls were talking to you as you went about your daily chores. But, the patients, abandoned and unloved as they were, were the true "diamonds" in that building. Each had had a life. Each had been young and vibrant once...maybe had been married, had children, held down a responsible job....in other words, had had a life -- just like me and the people I grew up with.

    I remember one day that left an indelible memory on my mind. It was almost the end of my summer job there, and my work was done for the day. I was sitting outside the ward doors, waiting for quitting time in a few minutes. The sun was low in the sky, and as it bled through the windows it hit the ward doors in a certain way. I could just make out the word "Polio" under all the layers of brown paint covering the doors. The next day, in my spare time, I went in search of other ward door labels (painted over), and much to my sorrow I saw "Scarlet Fever"...."Diphtheria"....."Encephalitis"...."Typhoid"...."Smallpox"...and others. I think this, more than anything else, brought home the seriousness of why this hospital had been built in the first place (around 1907 I think).

    May we never see those days again.

    P.S. - We're going through a COVID-19 pandemic right now. Can you imagine what it was like back in the 1920s thru 1950s when all these diseases were hitting our country at the same time? I guess folks were made of sterner stuff back then, huh?

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  37. I used to work here at "SoHo" as a porter during the summers of 1968 and 1969. At the time it was known as the "Essex County Geriatrics Center"....but, in truth, it was just a dumping place for indigent sick or disabled people. It was a very sad place to work each day because you could see real human beings left alone, not loved, abandoned by their families, with a staff that was greatly lacking in compassion.

    In the basement were the old operating rooms, moth-balled and locked....but you could look through the door windows and imagine what they must have been like 40 years ago. There were also 4 iron lungs in the basement corridor, I remember.

    Once, I was assigned to help a nurse take a dead body out to the morgue (a small building out in back of the facility). Now THAT was a creepy place if ever there was one! Townhouses stand on that site now.

    From the days when it was an isolation hospital (its original purpose) there were small sinks in the corridor of each ward -- a sink in between each room. Even though it was then just a geriatrics center, we were all obligated to wash our hands when coming out of one room before entering the next one. Germicidal soap was provided for this purpose. I must have washed my hands 20 times a day in the course of performing my porter duties.

    I remember a woman, only 57 yrs. old, who was there with MS. She was very nice, and we'd have some warm conversations sometimes. She was one of the lucky ones -- her family would come to visit on Sundays (visiting day). Almost no one else had visitors....ever. I felt really sorry for them, and I would even come in on Sundays -- even if it was my day off -- and visit with them so that they would not feel so lonely. And I remember a nice lady named Nettie Bowers who was on my ward. She was 108 yrs. old. She was blind, and mostly deaf, but you could still communicate with her if you spoke loud enough.

    And then there was a nice gentleman named "Frank" on my ward, who had glaucoma and had to be treated with this horrible smelling ointment in his eyes each morning. Frank and I became good friends during the summers that I worked there. I remember that he had a hobby of working with copper plate, embossing different pictures and scenes with a hand-held stylus. Frank's copper embossings were amazingly beautiful....and once, he even gave me one of "The Last Supper" to take home to my parents.

    The hospital was a very sad place....and it was almost as if the walls were talking to you as you went about your daily chores. But, the patients, abandoned and unloved as they were, were the true "diamonds" in that building. Each had had a life. Each had been young and vibrant once...maybe had been married, had children, held down a responsible job....in other words, had had a life -- just like me and the people I grew up with.

    I remember one day that left an indelible memory on my mind. It was almost the end of my summer job there, and my work was done for the day. I was sitting outside the ward doors, waiting for quitting time in a few minutes. The sun was low in the sky, and as it bled through the windows it hit the ward doors in a certain way. I could just make out the word "Polio" under all the layers of brown paint covering the doors. The next day, in my spare time, I went in search of other ward door labels (painted over), and much to my sorrow I saw "Scarlet Fever"...."Diphtheria"....."Encephalitis"...."Typhoid"...."Smallpox"...and others. I think this, more than anything else, brought home the seriousness of why this hospital had been built in the first place (around 1907 I think).

    May we never see those days again.

    P.S. - We're going through a COVID-19 pandemic right now. Can you imagine what it was like back in the 1920s thru 1950s when all these diseases were hitting our country at the same time? I guess folks were made of sterner stuff back then, huh?

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  38. My father was treated for polio at the Soho hospital in Essex county in September 1944 and he was cured with no residual effects.

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  39. I had a part time job as a nurses aid while working my way through college. It was the Geriatrics Center then. I was 19. I helped the cook make breakfast for the patients. She wasn't very pleasant but the RN on duty was very nice. The patients weren't all old. I remember a 24 year old man that had fallen from a ladder putting up holiday lights. He was a quadriplegic. He had a young wife that visited regularly. I also remember a middle aged woman with MS. I think her last name was Iurato. She made leather belts for therapy and was very nice. I also remember a 104 year old blind woman that would tell me she wanted a drink (liquor). The place was dark and I would go home depressed because some people had no visitors. I would spend my free time visiting patients. There was one woman that thought I was her daughter even though I would tell her who I was. Her daughter never came. That was 1973. In spite of the dreary surroundings I thought it was a positive experience because of the patients and the RN. I think her name was Mrs. Blackshear.

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  40. I saw this building on fire March 28 2023

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    1. What you actually saw was the filming of the new Joker film!

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  41. I spent 10 days there in October 1955 for Polio. I can still see everything just like it was today. At 4 years old the time is burned in your memory.

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  42. I grew up in Bloomfield and passed the hospital many times, my dad told me that as a child, he had been a patient there for diptheria circa 1920, so I guess it was the older building. He survived, obviously. I guess others that were inpatients were not so fortunate. So sad, it is truly such a beautiful space, up on that hill. I hope that someday something nice will occupy that hill.

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