The Roosevelt Hospital/ MIddlesex County Sanatorium

During the height of the tuberculosis outbreak in America, several New Jersey counties operated sanatoriums to combat the disease. Bergen County had the Bonnie Burn Hospital in Berkeley Heights. Passaic County had the Valley View Sanatorium on the border of Wayne and Haledon. Essex had the Essex Mountain Sanatorium on a small mountain overlooking the town of Verona. Even Hudson County built a 23 story "chest hospital" tower on the Jersey City Medical Center Campus. Camden County established a sanatorium on the edge of the Lakeland Psychaitric Hospital property, and private sanatoriums like the Cooley Hospital were popping up all over the state. Middlesex County had 212,208 residents according to the 1930 Census. They needed their own facility to treat the disease.

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The Roosevelt Hospital was established in the town of Metuchen in 1937. Built in a grand Colonial Revival style, the hospital served Middlesex County as their own sanatorium. The hospital was relatively small, having roughly 150 beds. The building resembled the Preakness Hospital, however the left wing of the Roosevelt Hospital had a small extra piece of building jutting off the back of the left wing. Set behind a small pond on an empty 13 acre parcel, the hospital was as scenic as it could be in such a densely populated area.

In 1946, a new antibiotic called Steptomycin was introduced. The drug proved vastly effective in treating tuberculosis. While the patients at the Roosevelt Hospital were being put on regiments of Streptomycin, a new psychiatric hospital was built on the edge of the property, to alleviate overcrowding at both Greystone and Marlboro State Hospitals. By the late 1950's, the antibiotics proved so effective that the facility was no longer needed. Instead of being demolished. the facility was renovated into a geriatric care facililty. The building would see several small expansions in its history. In the 1970's, 100 more beds were added behind the right wing of the old building. A large 250 bed wing connecting the two rear portions was completed in 1982.

The building was added to the State and National Registers of Historic Places in 2002, helping to ensure that the historic building would not be demolished. However, the Menlo Park Psychiatric Hospital wasn't so lucky, and was demolished the same year. Just a few years later, a new geriatric care facility was built on the site of a modern county building and a historic mansion aross the main road from the Roosevelt property. Minimal operations were carried out at the old Roosevelt Hospital, until they were phazed out in 2012. That same year, plans were announced that the building was to be renovated into senior housing. These plans would come to fruition in 2015, when the rear, modern portions of the buidling were demolished. The original portions of the building were renovated shortly afterwards.

Thankfully, the Roosevelt Hospital escaped the wave of demolition that took out seven other disused hospitals across New Jersey in 2015. Hopefully the building will be completed and remain occupied for many more years to come.

The Valley View Sanatorium (Preakness Hospital)

It was a cold fall day when I first found out about Preakness. A few photos and a vague sentence about  it's closure was all I had to go by. At the time I didn't have my drivers license, so I told my friend who usually drove us about the hospital. He forgot about it, until one day another one of my friends told him that he found a way in. It wasn't long before we loaded up the car and headed over.

Built in the 1920's as a WPA project, the main building originally served Passaic County as a tuberculosis sanatorium. The main building was designed by the famed Fred Wesley Wentworth, who is known for designing several of the greatest buildings in Passaic and Bergen Counties.

In the mid 1920's, tuberculosis was a major problem in America. It was a highly contaigous disease with a stiff rate of mortality. Essex County had the Essex Mountain Sanatorium, Morris, Camden, Middlesex, and Bergen County all had tuberculosis sanatoriums, and Hudson County was a few years away from building theirs too. Even the state had their own facility in Hunterdon County to treat the disease. Passaic County took the opertunity to construct their own.

The complex consisted of a number of buildings spread out across Oldham Road in the Preakness section of Wayne and a small piece in Haledon as well. The main campus was tucked away on 27 acres down a seperate driveway from the larger buildings which on a patch of land right on the roadway. The main campus consisted of the original building, power plant. a nurses residence and two doctors houses. The campus on Oldham also had its own power plant, which sat just behind the large building.

After new drugs came about to treat tuberculosis, there was no need to have such a large facililty anymore. The facility was turned into a county run nursing home. In 1987, a new wing was added to the left side of the Oldham stucture. It was also around this time that the nurses residence on the main campus was renovated into the Passaic County Youth Detention Facility. The facility was renamed the Preakness Healthcare Center.

The hospital buildings were all renamed. The main building was referred to as "Unit One". The large building on Oldham Road became "Unit Two" and the new wing they added on was "Unit Three". The hospital soon became a topic of contention for the local residents of the facility. The quarry next door, Braen Stone, made a deal to acquire nearly nine acres of hospital property in order to expand their operations. Local residents were understandably upset, as the constant blasting and other quarry operations were already too strong to ignore. The quarry was now going to be much closer to their houses

Despite the new wing being built only ninteen years earlier, the administraion of the hospital decided they wanted to replace Unit 2. The grounds around units two and three were cleared in 2006, and work began almost immediately to demolish the older of the two structures. The rest of the new hospital was built around Unit 3. Unit 1, the original hospital, remained open until all the patients were transferred to the new facility. The building oficially closed in 2009. When we first went, everything was still totally intact. The lights were still on, all of the equipment was still there, even the morgue cooler was still running. We felt that at any moment a nurse was going to come around the corner. That did not last long. Within a matter of months, water began leaking through the rubber roof, flooding the hallways and starting to feed what would become the worst mold we has ever seen. The brand new wheelchairs and other perfectly intact valuables were now soaked. Some of the chairs were even still wrapped up in plastic from the day they were unloaded from the trucks. Everything was quickly going to shit.

 We eventually found a way into the building that the police used as a forensic lab. Inside were crime scene photo's, evidence, collection kits, and tons of other unexpecteditems. We were used to the typical patient files and such being left behind. But nothing like this.

As we continued to visit Preakness, it continued to rapidly deteriorate.

One day as we were leaving, heading back to our car parked at the police academy behind the building, we popped out of the woods as usual. Right as it was too late to turn back, I saw the oh-so-familiar grill of a Sheriffs car. He saw us and quickly pulled up. He threw threats our way, saying that we were going to go to jail for trespassing. However, as there were no signs about trespassing and no fence around the property, we knew he couldn't really do that. We just played dumb, and eventually he let us go. It would be a few months before I went back to the hospital, and by the time I did it looked like this.

My asthma began to act up, and I told my girlfriend we needed to make it quick. We both left that day with upper respiratory infections. We both vowed that we were done with Preakness. I kept my word, only driving by a few more times a year. Then one day in 2015, I drove by to see it like this.

With the demolition of both Greystone and Marlboro state hospitals, we somehow lost track of the Preakness hospital. There was no protesting or fanfare. There was no citizen outrage. Preakness came into the world with a noble purpose, served thousands of people, and then was just demolished without any consideration.

Even the police building, which just two weeks earlier was still packed with stuff, was just a smokestack sticking out of the rubble.

The buildings were demolished by Braen Stone, in another expansion movement similar to the deal they made with Passaic County in the 1990s. The folks who lived around the hospital were outraged, as the quarry was already a nuisance to them. However, as is the case far too often these days, they were helpless in their pleas to local representatives. Passaic County saw a multi million dollar deal on the table and took it without any public input. They wouldn't care if the citizens left. If they do, that's just more land to sell to the quarry. I'm not sure how many people will remember Preakness, or how many people knew about it in the first place. Even people who grew up in town had no idea it was there. As with all abandoned locations, the end has to come one day. Whether it be renovation or demolition, most places will at least get a paragraph in the local paper. Preakness didn't. While it wasn't the greatest location New Jersey had to offer, anything this old should at least be considered for another future. Maybe one day we will wake up and realize this. But, the way things are going, by then it will probably be too late.

The Old Jersey City Medical Center

Jersey City has seen a boom of development over the past two decades. Several monolithic modern towers have been constructed in this time. But did you ever notice the the modest cluster of Art Deco high rises protruding out of the Bergen Hill neighborhood? Driving by now, one would see that it is the Beacon condominium complex. This wasn't always the case however. This group of buildings was originally the Jersey City Medical Center.

It all began in 1885, when the "City Hospital" (former Charity Hospital) of Jersey City moved operations from a dirty old hospital in the Paulus Hook area to it's new location on Baldwin Avenue.

The new hospital would quickly become obsolete though, and in 1909 a new three story castle- like building was completed. At this time there were also several houses on the property, which functioned as temporary hospitals until the new buildings were finished. Once the hospital began to flourish, several more buildings were added. Some of the new buildings were a chapel, a dormitory for the staff, and a morgue. A new house for the hospital administrator was also constructed around 1909.

As Jersey City began to grow, so did the hospital. In 1917, several new buildings were added to the property. One such building included a small power station, which allowed the hospital to generate it's own power. Around this time the original hospital building more than doubled in size as well, as a twin building was built behind it and another floor was added. Two brand new surgical suites were included in the new floor.

Just a year later, construction started on what would be the A. Harry Moore school for crippled children. The Moore school was among the the first in the country specifically focusing on educating children with disabilities. Though the building was originally going to be built at the hospital, a flawed beginning design left the structure of no use for the school. Instead, the school would be built on Kennedy Boulevard. The space originally intended for the school would go on to become the Dr. B. S. Pollak Hospital for Chest Diseases.

The new growth made the hospital really begin to gain a good reputation. This was nothing, however, compared to the expansion it would see in the next few decades.

In 1928, under the direction of mayor Frank Hague, the hospital would begin to see some major expansion. Haugue's vision was to be able to provide free, quality healthcare to residents of the city. The first new building of the complex was the Margaret Hague Maternity Hospital.

Named after mayor Frank Hague's late mother, The new ten story maternity hospital would go on to be one of the most well known buildings in all of Jersey City. An estimated 350,000 babies were born here. Speaking to neighbors and others who grew up in the city, more often than not folks were telling me "Sure, that's where I was born!"

Designed by one of the mayor's favorite city architects, Christian Ziegler, the maternity hospital was initially proposed years before the expansion of the medical center. The infant mortality rate in the county peaked in 1923, with roughly one in five births ending with the newborn dead. Numbers didn't fare much better for the mothers, who were also frequently dying in childbirth.

It didn't take long before the hospital built up a positive reputation. Despite having enough space and resources to comfortably attend to roughly 400 mothers, the hospital was quickly reducing the mortality rate for the city. Wards were open late for working fathers to be able to visit their newborn children after getting out of work.

A year after construction started on the maternity hospital, a new surgical building was built directly behind the building from 1909. The imposing 22 story structure was one of the tallest in the city at the time. The new building would be dubbed "Holloway Hall",

Also added in 1929 was a 17 story nurses home, directly adjacent to the power plant. This building was named "Fairbank Hall".

Part of the expansion of the hospital included adding more towers for staff housing, infectious diseases, and other various necessities of the now enormous hospital. This expansion included demolition of some of the buildings built on the property between 1907 and 1917. Two architects would work together to build the hospital up piece by piece. Overseeing the whole project was John T. Rowland, who designed several of Jersey City's more prestigious and well known buildings. Despite the various architects, all the buildings were designed in the same Art Deco fashion. It is by far the largest collection of Art Deco buildings in the state, if not the country.

In 1934, construction was started on several new towers. One of which was the Dr. B.S. Pollak Hospital for Chest Diseases. Towering over the complex at 22 stories, the hospital was named for one of the most prominent doctors in the field at the time. Though part of the city medical center, it was operated by Hudson County as their sanatorium during the outbreak of the early mid 1900's. It was the tallest building in Jersey City for over 50 years until the new commercial towers started going up downtown.

One of the other towers built at this time, the "B" building, would house the new main entrance to the complex. The two story lobby was clad in pink marble, with tracery on the ceiling and a decorative terrazzo floor. These buildings were the first to be renovated during the large scale conversion into condominiums in 2007.

A new clinic building was also added to the medical center in 1934, and it was almost a twin of the "C" building it stood behind. Over the years it provided mostly outpatient services.

On October 2nd, 1936, the complex was officially dedicated by then-president Franklin Delano Roosevelt. By this time, the medical center had grown into a towering complex akin to a city of it's own.

Around 1938, the complex would see construction start on even more towering Art Deco buildings. It was at this time that the 14 story Isolation building was built. It was referred to as "Al Blazi's Hall". At some point in it's history it stopped being used as an isolation ward and became the staff headquarters.

By 1941, construction on campus was completed. With two million square feet of building space, the medical center was unlike any other in the world. Though most of the complex was already completed by the mid 1930's, several more improvements were made to the buildings in this time. The last building built on campus in 1941 was a nurses residence named Murdoch Hall. With it's marble clad lobby, hardwood paneled office for Mayor Hague, and beautiful Art Deco movie theater, Murdoch Hall is one of the greatest buildings in Jersey City. In 1966, the building was also used by Hudson County Human Services. After the hospital closed, the building would continue to slowly rot away until 1995, when the Robert Redford movie "Quiz Show" was filmed in the tower. The film crew put a lot of time and effort into fixing up the building, as the rest of the campus continued to decline.

While on campus designing Murdoch, Christian Ziegler also designed a pair of 17 story towers that were added to the rear of the Maternity ward he originally created. Though sitting on only fourteen acres, the new medical center was the largest health care facility in the world.

As was the case with many hospitals in the late 1900's Jersey City Medical Center was overcrowded and underfunded. In 1979 the maternity ward on campus closed, and was converted into office space. However, this marked the beginning of the end for the campus. Less than a decade later, the Jersey City Medical Center went bankrupt and vacated the facility in 1988

Years of neglect left the campus as a complete eyesore for the city. Since the medical center could be seen for miles and miles, thousands of people looked at the decrepit complex day after day. The complex would serve as shelter for drug users and vagrants for nearly two decades, before a developer purchased the hospital with plans to renovate the whole complex.

Thankfully in 2007, work began on the largest restoration project in NJ history. Under the direction of Manhattan based reality group Metrowest, workers began renovating two of the staff buildings on the medical center property, built at the same time as the B.S. Pollak tower. By 2009 they were completely reborn as 315 condominium units. These buildings were renamed the "Capital" and "Rialto", after famous New York City Theaters. Nearly $135 million dollars went into renovation of the two towers.

However, things came crashing to a stop in 2010, midway through the renovation of the Murdoch building. The economic downturn left many of the already renovated units empty. The owner at the time, George Filopoulos, sold off most of the still-deteriorated hospital to a Connecticut based firm for $47 million.

Work began again almost immediately in the Murdoch building, which was the third to be renovated. It was dubbed the "Paramount" building, keeping with the trend of renaming the buildings after famous New York City theaters.

By 2015, work had mostly wrapped up on the last few blighted hospital buildings. Fairbank Hall, the Pollak hospital and the Margaret Hague Maternity ward were the last towers on campus to be renovated.

The Jersey City Medical Center is an amazing example of both Art Deco architecture and historic preservation. What could have ended with a series of controlled implosions instead became one of the greatest examples of adaptive reuse in the history of the United States. As a result, it can now be used in future arguments towards saving our historic buildings. If this two million square foot complex of towers can be brought back after two decades of disuse, almost anything can.

The Cooley Sanatorium/ Villa Maria Home for the Aged

Located in a quiet suburban town, this decrepit hospital complex was once was once a tuberculosis sanatorium. Doctor Justus Cooley, a graduate of the New York Eclectic Medical College, opened his homeopathic hospital in the newly incorporated boro of North Plainfield as a scenic getaway for residents afflicted with tuberculosis.

Listed in the fourth volume of Journal of the American Institute of homeopathy as opening in 1889, the hospital is one of the earliest existing sanatorium hospitals in the state of New Jersey. Though the inside of the buildings bare almost no trace of how they appeared in those days, the exterior definitely hints to the age of the complex.

It was only seven years earlier that the microbe "tubercle bacillus" was discovered by Dr. Robert Koch. The name was derived from the latin word "tuberculum" which just meant a small bump. Though the name was around long before the microbe was discovered, the name only began to stick then. Before this, the disease was commonly referred to as "consumption".

The sanatorium, which at this time was still just a small two story hospital structure and a small house, was closed by the time World War I started. In 1939 the land and buildings were sold to the Franciscan Servants of the Holy Child Jesus. They would go on to construct new buildings, including a building with a chapel and a three story dormitory directly behind the original sanatorium building. The hospital was renamed the "Villa Maria home for the Aged".

The 1950's saw a need for more beds at the hospital, so another dormitory was added to the front of the original building in 1953. In doing this, a portion of the original building was remodeled so heavily it was basically demolished, and not much more can be said for the inside of the remaining portion of it.

More and more small additions were added to the main building, including a small portion with a false stone veneer added to the back in the early 1960's. Another seperate dormitory building was built for staff next to Dr. Cooley's humble home.

Finally, the most modern section of the hospital was built on the left of the original building in the 1970's. From what I can gather, it was a hospice ward. There was also a library added to the wing adjoining the original building 

It is around this time that the original section would see its final renovation.

Some of the original brick buildings were covered in stucco and painted over in yellow at some time later in the hospital's history. Despite all of the work and improvement done to the complex, the nursing home closed in 2002.

All of the buildings were vacated, save for the caretakers house on the property. Though no operations were held at the facility at this time, the sisters would continue to evade taxes until 2005, when their non profit status was revoked. The nuns would try and argue this, lying about income and hiding assets from the IRS. However, a lien was a placed against the property in 2007, with the sisters owing almost one and a half million dollars in back taxes for the blighted property.

After this ruling, the real scandal began to come out over the property. Collection notices were sent to the abandoned Villa Maria property, which time after time were returned because the property was represented by a group in Morristown. The town should have been aware of this, as the addresses of both the existing Villa Maria in Pennsylvania and the legal representatives in Morristown were on file. OPRA requests to see these documents, however, were rejected by the borough clerk. More and more requests for comment were rejected by borough officials, leading the citizens of the town to believe that illegal deals were made to encourage development of the property.

The outrage of the citizens didn't just stop there either. Several hundred people spoke out against the development of the property, asserting that the buildings should be saved and the land preserved as open space; something the borough lacks entirely. The local newspaper received a handful of letters, all saying the same thing.

As the shady deals began to come to light, the buildings on the property continued to rot away. Numerous local kids had found their way inside the buildings, smashing holes in the walls and leaving graffiti on every spot they could find. Though this played right into the owners hands, they were forced try and keep people out by putting up plywood and "no trespassing" signs.

While everyone was waiting for something to happen with the property, several conservationists reached out to the DEP about the property. It seemed that the 17 acre Villa Maria parcel was home to several uncommon species of trees, some dating back two hundred years.

With all of this information getting stirred up, the owners were getting anxious about their investment. They insisted that one structure on the property was not within the defined flood zone. Therefore a DEP permit should not be necessary in order to begin demolition on the building. However, concerns about asbestos and other hazardous materials played a factor as well.

Strides were made to get the Villa Maria hospital buildings on the state register of historic places, but the state denied the application. They cited lack of cooperation from the owners of the property as the main reason for declining to register the buildings. They did mention, however, that the buildings could still make it on the register if the boro amended their own historic preservation laws for Washington Park to include the hospital as another historic entity.

Unfortunately the boro stated that this was not really the case. They mentioned that if a majority of the owners of a property rejected the designation that there was nothing the boro could do. Since the Villa Maria property was under the sole ownership of a private entity, there is little hope that any such designation would take place. They also added that even if the buildings were added to the NJRHP, they still could be demolished in their entirety.

A representative of the DEP Historic Preservation Office was contacted about the ongoing struggle over the property. He gave a presentation about the property to the residents, in which he insisted that the boro could get the building on the register by adding it onto the "Master Plan" for the town. To do this, a Historic Preservation component needed to be added to the plan. While the buildings could still be demolished in that scenario, it would become much harder to get the proper permits.

As citizens worked on their efforts to preserve the property, an application to build age restricted condos were initially approved in 2007. This was done despite loud and consistent outcry at the planning board meetings. However, the process was halted by Somerset County.

Another issue that generated fear over the fate of the property is the conflict of interest between the Environmental Commission and the Boro's leadership. The chair of the Environmental Commission, Harry Allen, is none other than the husband of the mayor. He has refused to recuse himself on the matter, despite his wife's documented position in favor of building on the property. In accordance with this, the department has objected to repeated attempts from concerned citizens to do their jobs and conduct environmental studies on the property. Fearing the possibility of finding something that would spur development from the area, the commission has elected to ignore this issue entirely. The mayor has gone on record claiming that the boro was denied a grant and therefore cannot do any studies. This is wildly untrue though, as the state environmental commission provides guidelines on how volunteers can conduct the studies themselves. No grant money needed.

In 2008, the property changed hands. It was sold to Watchung Hills at North Plainfield, a limited liability corporation. A site plan came forth, showing extensive tree removal throughout the property. In addition, a majority of the hospital was to be demolished. The demolition included the original Cooley Sanatorium buildings, several of the buildings added under the ownership of Villa Maria, and the caretakers house as well.

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Since 2008, almost nothing had been published about the hospital. The buildings had been almost completely boarded up on the first floor, and since then the vandalism had somewhat subsided. Still they continued to rot with time. What we had here was a classic case of "demolition by neglect", where property owners intentionally ignore structural problems and vandalism until the building is too far gone to save. 

A pair of large fires in 2017 decimated the most historic portions of the campus, which sealed the properties fate. The campus was completely demolished in 2020. The township got their way, nd plans call for residential development on most of the property. While the buildings may be forgotten, the details of greed and deceit from all parties involved shouldn't be.