Essex County Isolation Hospital (Main Building, 2012)

Published on: August 8th, 2012 | Last updated: May 26, 2020 | Written by: Bad Guy Joe

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In the NYC suburb of Belleview, New Jersey, the Essex County Isolation Hospital has sat abandoned for years.

History
Formerly own as the Essex County Isolation Hospital, this grand building is located on a campus where there were several additional outbuildings located. It opened in 1905 and was used for isolating patients with Polio and Scarlett Fever. In 1955 the county took control of this property, and the buildings were reused for a variety of health care needs. Most notably, it was used as a location in the filming of the 2001 movie “A Beautiful Mind“

This building in particular is the only one left inactive on a campus that was the first abandoned hospital I had ever visited, nearly 12 years ago as of this writing (2012). In 2001, we visited a set of 3 attached buildings that were long abandoned (seemingly since at least the 1970s). These buildings were bulldozed in 2006, with low budget little apartment buildings built in their place.

The last tenant of this structure was the Garden State Cancer Center. They only used one wing of this building, and closed around 2018 after federal funding ran out. It was soon bought for $3.7 million dollars by John Mavroudis, of Astoria based Alma Realty (Alma, astute followers of this site will recognize, is also the owner of the former Apple Tag and Label factory in Queens). His plans are to convert it to residential use, though much like the Apple Tag & Label building, progress is painfully slow.

Present:
When I returned to this place in 2012, the main building was still somewhat in use. We did however find that the rear wing of the building had abandoned for at least 2 decades now. It makes for strange neighbors: an active, maintained building attached to a completely abandoned, neglected structure.

Entering this place was tricky. After all, it was surrounded by houses now.

Once you’re finally inside, you begin to wonder if it was worth the trip. This is very much unlike the previously explored buildings – which were straight up awesome. Inside this rear wing, there wasn’t not much to look at. Many many empty rooms with little furniture left over. A huge kitchen space, completely trashed—and a basement that is both creepy from it’s darkness and boring from it’s emptiness. At least there’s some delightfully ridiculous old graffiti in here to keep things interesting.

Despite not getting into the largest sections of the building, this was still a fun adventure. Sliding in and out of tiny broken windows at 8AM on a Sunday is never a dull time. Waving to the neighbors walking their dogs as you leave is a bit of icing on the cake.

Comments

NOTE: It sometimes takes a short while for comments to be approved - unfortunately there's a lot of spam comments that come in. I absolutely love when y'all share personal stories of friends relatives etc who worked in these places. It really helps capture what these places were like before they closed up shop.

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