Convent of St. Mary, Abbey and Chapel, Peekskill, NY

The 1876 Abbey of the Community of St. Mary, shot by moonlight.

For over a century, the Convent at Mount St. Gabriel, a picturesque plot of land in the highlands of Peekskill, NY, was home to the Community of St. Mary. From its humble beginnings in 1872 in a clapboard farmhouse, the Convent soon grew into a multi-building complex with a full church, a school, and ample housing for both the Sisters and their charges. By 2003, when the convent moved to Greenwich, NY, the school had already been repurposed, but the Abbey proper, as well as the Chapel, remained vacant, as they have to this day.

Based on a Benedictine model, the Community of St. Mary adheres to a simple monastic life centered around prayer, reflection, and service. From tumultuous beginnings, including an uphill battle against the established positions of the Church on monastic orders in general, the CSM eventually flourished after being widely recognized for the selfless acts of its Sisters in service to the community. It is the oldest indigenous Anglican order in the New World, and the first monastic body constituted by the Episcopal Church since the dissolution of monasteries in the 16th century.

While the forms of service practiced by the nuns of the order have varied over the years and regions, at this particular complex, the running of a school and the manufacture of communion wafers were a primary focus. In 1977, as a result of declining enrollment, the Episcopal church closed the school, and the parcel of land containing it was sold off to a private developer; in the early 1980s, the 1911 building was converted to luxury condominiums. The Chaplain's House on the grounds is now the private residence of a local doctor, and has been gut renovated.

But since the CSM moved to a larger property in Greenwich, New York, in 2003, little has been done to the 1876 Abbey and 1896 Chapel buildings. The interiors of each are, for the most part, gutted; work was begun on the buildings, but never completed, due to the subprime mortgage collapse. Some significant interior architectural features have been left intact, but the majority of the structures have been stripped down to their frames. The properties are owned by Ginsburg Development, and their website indicates that they will be developed as "The Abbey at Fort Hill", a 12-unit luxury condo complex. This would be to the benefit of the town of Peekskill, which sorely needs the tax revenue, but also to the benefit of the Community of St. Mary - as part of the proposed development, Ginsburg would relocate the cemetery to the Greenwich location, bringing the founding Sisters to the modern convent.


The majority of the Abbey was gutted in between 2003, when the property was vacated, and the subprime mortgage collapse of 2008.



Untouched so far, the chapel on the second floor of the Abbey is remarkably intact.



During the heyday of the Convent, this chapel was primarily used to provide services for ailing nuns, who were housed on the second floor of the building.



As membership in the Convent and its school declined, the small chapel was used for most services, and the large 1896 Chapel building was only used for special functions.



The ornate hand-painted walls were finished prior to the start of the First World War, and are holding up remarkably well.



Very few interior architectural details remain, but apparently the developers feel that the original wooden staircases will fit with their luxury condo designs.



A view through one of the dormer windows on the third floor, looking towards the Chapel building.



An ornate spiral staircase leads from the first to the third floors.



This mechanism, with an array of gears and dangling weights, led up into what was possibly a bell tower.



View of the grounds at sundown. To the left is the Abbey, and to the right is the Chapel.



A dusk view of the 1896 Chapel, which was constructed of locally quarried stone - during this time period, labor was cheap, and materials expensive.



A font on the outside of the chapel; the inscription translates (roughly) as "Lydia: rest thou well and pray for us".



The bell tower on the Chapel building.



A view to the road leading away from the Convent.

For more images of the Convent, check out Amy Heiden Photography.

The Hotel Columbia, Sharon Springs, NY

The first floor lounge of the Hotel Columbia.

A short walk from the Hotel Adler, its sister building in Sharon Springs, NY, stands the Hotel Columbia. Like the Adler, the Columbia primarily catered to New York City's Jewish population following the second World War. After the decline of the Borscht Belt region, much of the town catered in particular to Orthadox and Hasidic Jews; the Columbia was one of several hotels that did so, adapting all kitchen facilities to follow Kosher law, and removing the televisions from the establishment.

Unlike the Adler, the Columbia was primarily a long-term hotel; rooms were rented by the week (at an average of $140 per in 1977). Except for the tiny economy rooms on the top floor, every room came with a kitchen across the hall; guests of the hotel would be given keys to both. There was some light evening entertainment offered at the Columbia; noted Ukrainian dance musician Michael Skorr performed there for 18 consecutive summers. However, many guests would opt to head over to the Adler for the more elaborate comedy shows and vaudeville acts featured over there. Like the Adler, the Columbia shuttered its doors after the 2004 season; its fate remains in the air.


The main lobby & check-in area.


A typically narrow hallway within the building.


A standard two-bed room. The kitchen which accompanied this room is located across the hallway.


Each kitchen had two sink basins - one for meat and one for dairy, in keeping with Kosher law.


A detail of one of the kitchens.


The third story landing.


The end of one wing of the Columbia is sustaining significant water damage; a carpet of moss has grown in this third floor room.


The water damage has caused a partial ceiling collapse in this second-floor room, revealing rotting joists.


Like the Adler, many rooms in the Columbia had tacky wallpaper that must have looked dated by the 1970s, even though the hotel ran for decades after.


Most bathrooms did not include bathing facilities; there were communal baths in the center wing of the hotel.


Plenty of artifacts, like these blankets, remain, slowly moldering in this beautiful old building.

Buffalo State Hospital - the H. H. Richardson Complex

In stark contrast to the majority of locations featured on this blog, the H. H. Richardson Complex, a grand Kirkbride building in Buffalo, NY, is not in danger of being demolished or left to rot. A National Historic Landmark, the building is currently being stabilized and has recently been secured against intruders. Better still, budget is already in place in order to restore the gorgeous Romanesque building to her former glory. The Richardson Center Corporation is overseeing the restoration.

Buffalo State Hospital's original main building complex features a central Administrative building crowned by two 185-foot-tall towers, copper roofed with dormer windows. The masonry is of red medina sandstone, and is one of the earliest examples of H. H. Richardson's trademark style, Richarsonian Romanesque. The central Administrative building is flanked on either side by two sandstone ward pavilions, connected by curved connector hallways. These hallways served a dual purpose - their curvature made it impossible to place beds in the connector hallways, which was a common practice at overcrowded hospitals of the era. At the same time, it allowed a greater level of supervision, as doctors and nurses could easily traverse the entire length of the complex, while orderlies and patients could be confined to a single ward. This notion conformed to the hospital hierarchy of the day, and was touted by John P. Gray, superintendent of Utica State Hospital and an adviser to Richardson, as one of the innovative features of the Buffalo asylum's design.


Hallway of the innermost brick ward, second floor. [Print]

The original plan for the hospital was to build the remaining ward pavilions - a total of five on each side - in the same sandstone. However, the outer three wards on either side (the pavilions to the west were for female patients, and those to the right for male) were constructed of brick when the budget fell short. The wards were constructed en echelon; the Administration building had four stories, and on either side, the next two wards had three stories, the following two had two stories, and the final ward (reserved for violent patients) had a single story. In the 1960s, the Male brick wards were demolished in order to build an ugly, utilitarian modern building for the psych center.


A dormitory at the end of the second story of the inner brick ward. [Print]


A cast iron stairway in the brick wards. The stairs in the sandstone wards have a higher degree of ornamentation. [Print]


The first floor hallway of the center brick ward. This floor contains dozens of discarded wheelchairs. [Print]


The top floor of the connector hallway between the two sandstone pavilions. [Print]


A door on the second floor of the brick wards. Note that there is a mesh window for the orderlies to look in upon the patients. Like most of the hardware in the hospital, the doorknob is missing. [Print]


View of the violent ward of the Female Wing from the attic of the center brick ward. The violent wards were a single story tall, and their footprint was very different from that of the rest of the hospital. [Print]

One feature of the Buffalo State Hospital Kirkbride which differentiates it greatly from many other Kirkbride buildings is the single-loaded main corridors. More expensive from a construction perspective, the southern-facing windows in these corridors provided a maximal amount of light, which was in keeping with Dr. Kirkbride's Moral Treatment plan. Each main corridor is bisected with a smaller corridor to the north, each of which was double-loaded. Bathroom and shower facilities, as well as coatrooms and storage, were placed in these extensions. The footprint of the Topeka State Hospital (now mostly demolished) appears to have been based upon this design.


Another brick ward hallway. [Print]


Ornate fireplace in the Administration building.

The majority of the complex is in remarkably good shape, especially considering its long abandonment. The most significant damage is to the hallway connecting the inner and center brick wards. In order to get from one to the next, one must carefully pass over a "bridge" of swaying, uncollapsed floor.


At some point between 2004 and 2008, someone placed a radiator grill over the collapse bridge. [Print]


Two geriatric chairs in a corner of a dayroom in the sandstone wards. [Print]


A coatroom in the brick wards. [Print]


Some medical equipment remains in the pitch-black depths of the single-story violent ward. The EEG machine in the background was manufactured by Medcraft, the same company which designed the B-24 Glissando ECT machine, the standard in electroshock therapy from the 50s through the 70s. [Print]


Shower stalls with privacy walls in the sandstone wards. In many similar hospitals, the showers would be communal, with no such walls in place. Here there are walls, but no doors - ensuring that the orderlies could keep a watch on patients even as they could not view each other. [Print]


Hallway in the sandstone wards. Note the brightness here as a result of the 12-foot-tall windows in the single-loaded corridor. [Print]


An original sandstone fireplace featuring a medieval "Green Beast" motif. Sadly, at some point this particular example was painted over in the ward colors of the time. [Print]


Detail from an unpainted "Green Beast" fireplace. [Print]

At some point, while the sprinkler system was still functional, a fire broke out in one of the patient rooms on the outer sandstone ward. The result is that the smoke clung to the upper reaches of the walls until the sprinklers kicked in, causing the soot to run down. The result is actually rather stunning, although certainly nearly disastrous. Fortunately, the structural damage is minimal - the room in which the fire originated is fairly charred, but outside of that, no serious damage was done.


Soot runs down the walls, the paint now peeling. [Print]


A patient's bed in the fire-damaged ward. [Print]


The sprinklers did not kick in here, and the heavy soot near the 16-foot-high ceiling is evidence of the amount of smoke generated in the fire. [Print]


Sunset through the windows in a dormitory inside the fire-damaged ward. [Print]


Sunset inside a solarium which was later converted to a dormitory. Note the 16-foot ceilings and the ornamental pillars. [Print]


The twin towers after dark.

In addition to the prints available in selected captioned photographs above, further images from Buffalo State Hospital may be obtained in this gallery, or by purchasing my photobook on the subject, "Buffalo State Hospital: A History of the Institution in Light and Shadow".