Fear. It rolls across my chest as I visit the old section of the psychiatric ward, now covered in the bare vines of ivy. Fogged yellow windows, the remnants of unused medical equipment can be seen through the grated window panes, and the red brick building towers seven stories high into the darkening skies of winter. The barren vines wind their way across the face of a building that bespeaks of pain and anguish, the tall rusted gates with lamps adorning the tops keep onlookers at a safe distance and the inhabitants or inmates safely within. At the base of the building on the corner of 28th and 1st Avenue, pixalated murals of joyous cartoon figures (now barely visible) adorn the chipped walls. They deeply disturb me, seem far out of place. On the gate hangs a sign: “Intake and Vacancy Control Entrance”. It points to a darkened corridor with a rather large black man standing guard in a fur-lined winter jacket. He eyes me as I pass. I nod but he does nothing.
I continue walking down 1st Avenue and enter the side entrance on 28th street and approach the security guard holding my camera. “There are no pictures here,” he says. “You can’t take them here–you need to go over there.” He points to the other side of the street. I say okay and say, “I just have one question: is the psych ward still here?” I point up sweeping my hand over the image of the worn building. He tells me it has closed, tells me that it has moved. “To Rikers?” I ask. He says he doesn’t know and I move on and continue taking pictures from across the street and down 28th which is in the midst of renovation. I know that what he says is untrue, that what has actually happened is that the pysch ward was simply moved inside and that this building has now become a homeless shelter.
I feel I am chipping away at an emotional puzzle, slowly letting the environment inform me of its pasts and presents. There is an air of strict control matched with a realization that bad things have occurred here, things which over the Bellevue’s long history have leaked out to the press and city inspectors, much of which I am now just coming to read. I walk back towards the main entrance of the Bellevue and enter.
1st Avenue and East 27th Street: 6:00 PM, Main Lobby
Audio Clip: http://chirb.it/hfOGM2
Vacuous. Empty space abounds in the space where the modern wing has been grafted on to the original architecture of the Bellevue. Sweeping architecture, half circles sweep above me and slam into the old architecture of the original administration building of the Bellevue. The expanse of the space is grand, off-white columns jut downwards into the black, white and salmon marble. Light pink brick on the walls tinged with black. The roof is made of glass panels with beige, metal pole framing. The old exists fully encapsulated by the modern facade, a relic of time’s passed. Au Bon Pain cafe in the corner, heavy metal chairs, steel circular tables–there are six of them, each with three chairs and they sit off to the side, lonely in this great expanse of space. A policeman stands guard at the entrance to the old administration building and looks bored but vigilant. I ask him about the old psych ward next door, confirms that that was its initial purpose but that now it serves as a homeless shelter. “Where is the psych ward now?” I ask, feigning deference to his badge. “Here,” he states curtly, pointing up to the original Bellevue architecture behind him. I thank him and move on. He is busy and I am merely a spectator to this space of suffering.
I look up to the bright halogen lights that shoot across the poles lining the roof. It is as if I am in a museum, strategic lighting accentuating the modern architecture of steel and glass while framing the old Bellevue with a sense of controlled preservation. I walk over, order a coffee and strategically place myself at a table on the side, away from the open space. This is the place I will come to observe this particular space of the Bellevue.
Voices bounce off of the marble floors, reverberate in the hollows and seem lost, empty souls roaming the halls of empty space. I record the sounds of the marbled halls as people far and near discuss their work schedules, doctors, nurses and interns on their breaks. Invalids sweep into the main lobby from the cold and damp 1st Avenue limping, wearing the tattered clothing of better days unseen. Some seem crazy, talking to themselves in overzealous bouts of frustration. Others are merely quiet, perhaps subdued. Wheelchairs, canes, limps, pain, quiet voices. Signs on the glass lining each floor read in all capital letters “FLU” for no apparent reason. A banner on the old administration building underneath the oxidized green lanterns reads “Bellevue Goes Red for Health” and two white manikins wearing red dresses stand on either side. A marble bench in front has patient’s family members and friends sitting on the bench, seemingly unaware of the strange scene behind them.
This is an easy place to sit as a visitor. Interns sit next to me discussing their night shift which I gather is about to begin. Whether a patient awaiting admittance or friends or family members of those who have been admitted, this is a space of waiting. Not a space of joy or laughter, it is subdued, a space of suffering, a space interpolated between the known and the unknown, the past and the ever-enfolding present of architectural traces. I stand and walk down the hallways towards the Psychiatric Evaluation Services Building, building C2.
Moving from Main Lobby to Secondary Lobby on 27th Street, 6:30 PM
Catholic church, synagogue, prayer rooms for every religion imaginable just down the hall. People wait here for long periods of time, enough to need churches. I move down the hallway as a spectator of other people’s pain and joy. I am uncomfortable, feel as though I do not have a right to be here. This is a space where people come for comfort from their ailments and admittance is granted to only those that suffer. Suffering and the employment of lessening suffering is the connection to the building, the reason that people from all five boroughs of New York City and beyond make their way to the Bellevue Hospital. It is the reason people come here and the reason people stay. I work my way down the forest green hallways spotted with white tiles and come upon the secondary lobby on 27th street. Mentally, I am still mapping out the territory, learning the crooks and crannies and hidden recesses of the Bellevue.
Secondary Lobby on 27th Street, 6:30 PM
Audio Clip: http://chirb.it/0F1DJg
Another common sitting area, this one with darker tiles, gray stony pillars beige in color. The lighting is painfully florescent, the ceiling lower. Strange white bean pod seats adorn the ground with orange cushions. Sitting diagonally from one another, primary red flower pots with dead plants in them spot the floor and seem to fit nicely into their drab surroundings. People sit and talk in hushed tones, voices from the hallways echo against the marble floors. I cannot understand what they are saying nor can I locate them visually. Behind me, large rectangular windows framed with brown metal open out to a drop-off area and a primary blue parking garage not far off to the left.
“MRI”, “Parking”, “Pharmacy” signs line the hallways. I am nervous and anxious, as if a nurse or doctor is about to come out and give me the bad news about a non-existent relative that has been treated at the Bellevue. The air is tinged with stale food and another Au Bon Pain cafe, bright yellow in color, is over in the corner. I smile and find it comical that “pain” is the last word in the restaurant’s name, regardless of its obvious meaning in French. Police walkie-talkies can be heard but I see no policemen. Cell phones ring, the sound of a man rolling a garbage bin down the hallway comes closer but stops. He is a janitor and stops to talk to a woman that is lost, then continues. There is a humming in the background, the crinkling of paper bags. The sound of music is distant, people walk by talking, I am encapsulated in a cave of inaudible murmurs and stale air. My head hurts. The light is dim. I exit.
Questions that arise:
What does it mean for the Bellevue to be a space of suffering? What of joy, happiness, boredom? What else is felt within this space?
How does one unfold the history of a space through observation alone? What can be told about the nooks and crannies of the Bellevue? Can one extrapolate a history of the space from the mossy grooves of a worn brick wall? What do broken, yellowed windows and wrought iron gates say?
What does it mean to keep people’s stories out of this exploration? Can I tell the Bellevue’s story as a physical space without interviewing people and asking them how the space affects them? Is it appropriate to observe people and at times, place my readings of their emotions on them? What then happens to their agency and if it is lost, does that really matter?
This piece moves from the notion that physical spaces literally and figuratively frame the possibilities of particular emotions to be felt. Within this physical structure then, do people have the agency to feel the ways in which they want to feel or is the array of possible emotions drawn into the architecture of the building itself?
Photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/47478409@N06/sets/72157623335347155/show/with/4367244613/
I went to nursing school at Bellevue in the 1960′s and worked in the Psych department after graduation. I enjoyed reading your comments about Bellevue. It brought back many memories.
Posted by bobkat198 | March 3, 2010, 2:43 pm