| Note: this should be read in conjunction with Fieldnotes No. 1 and 2 |
I walk down E. 30th to 1st Avenue, take a few pictures from different angles this time. There is an older black man who has walked with me incidentally down E. 30th and now stands next to a forgotten phone booth, its phone dangling from a mangled chrome cord, its plastic walls cracked and soiled. He simply watches me from within the booth while I take pictures, saying and doing nothing. I smile and cross the street.
Even in broad daylight, the building of the old psych ward sends chills down my spine. It is only 8 stories tall, far from the most imposing building in New York City but for some reason never have I felt more uncomfortable near a space than this one. I take in the dead ivy once again, the yellowed windows and cross the street. I am now on the corner of E. 30th and 1st Ave., the corner where the murals are. I look at them closer this time, capture them with photos the best that I can. The dead gardens at their base are photographed as well and I turn the corner and head down E. 30th to the main entrance where I hope to take a clearer photo of the original entryway. After shooting a few distanced photos, I watch cautiously as an NYPD officer exits the gates and walks to the left towards 1st Ave. He pays no attention to me and as he turns the corner to the left, I enter the old Bellevue gates and approach the security booth once again, this time with another security guard whose name I come to find is Santos.
Santos comes out of the security booth as I enter and I ask him if I can just take a picture of the entryway and he says, “Absolutely not”. Santos is a tall man, seemingly in his early to mid 30′s with a piercing in his left ear, a large fake diamond lined with gold dangling from his elongated earlobe. He wears Dolce and Gabana eyeglasses, is around 6’3″ tall (slightly taller than myself), is lanky and slumps his shoulders over his chest, closing off the chest cavity, a physiological move of protection-habituated. His skin is splotched with past and current acne markings. He has picked some and carries the resulting scars, particularly on his right cheek near his lower jaw bone. His arms seem to go on forever. Stringy and out of control, they ride the movements of his skinny legs like young children in a carriage, never seemingly in tune with one another, prone to indifferent swayings this way and that. When he tells me that I cannot take a picture, he says it with a down-turned mouth, a mouth that tells me he would rather not be saying this, that it is his job that forces him to be this way. He walks towards me calmly, as if he is coming out to meet an old friend. Smiling, I say, “But I can go across the street to take one, right?” He smiles and says, “You said it. Nothing I can do ’bout that.” I turn and he continues walking with me, continues saying that he can’t do anything about me taking pictures from across the street and as soon as we hit the sidewalk, his manner changes, his shoulders relax even further. “Couldn’t tell you anything on Bellevue property but I can out here,” he says smiling, his teeth crooked, oddly spaced, the silver from the back of his mouth catching my attention. “This isn’t their property.” He wears a big smile now out of the left side of his mouth. It is a clever defiance that he practices, one that has no way of getting him in trouble and he is eager to talk. I smile and approach him. There is now only three feet between us but it is a comfortable three feet, one that bespeaks of secrecy and sharing. I ask him how long he has worked at the Bellevue and he tells me two years and that he has been working in mental hospital security for five. He repeats everything twice, as if confirming these facts for himself. He tells me that he grew up on the Lower East side for his whole life, tells me about how he and his friends used to walk by the Old Psych Ward when they were young. “There’s some stories. There’s some stories,” he says, reapeating this again and again. I am intrigued but cognizant of the fact that we have just met and am reticent of scaring him off with intrusive questions. I simply listen to what he is willing to say.
I ask him if he ever works the night shift and he tells me he tries not to, that the place is creepy as hell. I ask him if he ever hears stories from those that do and he tells me there are tons, tells me that the 9th floor is completely off limits to everyone, that they shut it down when there were too many voices and people were hearing regular tappings on the windows when there weren’t any birds outside. He tells me that when the voices became too loud on the 9th floor, they shut it down and totally forbade anyone to go there. He continues and tells me that pictures are totally forbidden inside and outside on Bellevue property, that the Bellevue is a landmark building and mentions Bloomberg and says that he never wants to be on that man’s bad side. It is odd in the way that he mentions Bloomberg, as if the man himself has forbade photographs, and we laugh. This interests me: the security guards cannot take pictures inside or out nor can the public. They are taught to look for cameras from the male homeless people that now inhabit the old psych ward, are taught to be on the lookout for flashes and confiscate any cameras they encounter. Santos talks about how many people want to expose the Bellevue, that they want to document the dirtiness and the violence. He says that it can’t be exposed, that it is highly protected by the government. He tells me that there are so many stories to tell and that it is his job to stop people from telling them as much as possible. In addition to the private security firm that is employed by the Bellevue, the NYPD has officers specifically assigned to the hospital. These policemen (and they are all men from what I gather) watch the private security guards and reinforce the laws of Bellevue. The inside of the Bellevue is guarded and watched over by the Bellevue Hospital police (separate from the NYPD and the private security firm from what I could gather) and the orderlies inside. Something begins to unfold. As fear-inducing as the old psych ward of the Bellevue is, it becomes apparent that the Bellevue is fearful of outsiders, fearful of exposure with too many bad stories locked within. The building has become a composite of its historically-insane inhabitants, a collection of the traces of its psychiatric patients. The Bellevue is afraid and I think about this for a while, try to discern what this means for a building to be afraid. I then imagine the old psych ward as an old man, veined hands and lonely. It is the old man that has lost touch with reality, the man that was always an asshole to his kids and perhaps drank too much. It is an old man that has withdrawn and recoils at the approach of anyone or anything that threatens to disrupt his stagnant, habituated lifestyle. I imagine this building as deeply unhappy, its walls resounding with the voices and cries of its past patients in pain and insane laughter.
Santos tells me that beneath the nine floors there are two sub-basements, the bottom sub-basement being what they still refer to as the “chambers”. These rooms still have all the original equipment including the tables where they administered drug treatments (many experimental) from when the psych ward closed in 1984 and its inhabitants were moved to the Southern section of the hospital. Everything remains exactly as it was when the psych ward closed. All remains. This fascinates me. What does it mean that nothing has changed in 26 years, that the original equipment lies untouched? What are they preserving? Is it mere laziness or is it something else? Are they afraid and if so, of what? What lies dormant in the stagnation of the old Bellevue psych ward?
I ask Santos about the murals outside on the corner of 1st Ave and 30th street. Cracked and sordid, these were painted by the psych patients themselves he tells me. There are gardens in front of them, still with the stakes in the ground and dying plants at their base. Santos tells me that these too are from the psych patients. 26 years and nothing has changed, not even the landscaping? I air my doubts and sense of surprise but he reassures me, laughing and pointing to the bushes near the original intake entryway of the old psych ward. “Ha. It’s all the same man. Just like it was. Nothin’s changed.” Why remain the same for so long? Stagnant and fearful. Highly patrolled, largely protected.
I look up at the ivy walls again, ask him if the ivy grows back in Spring and he tells me it does. I say, “Good, cause this dead stuff just adds to the creepiness.” He laughs and says, “It is such a creepy place. You should come back at night and see it.” He clicks his fingers as if remembering something and says that he wishes a certain lady was around but she just took off. I ask what her name is but he can’t recall. “She’s an African lady,” he says. “Man, I wish she was here ’cause she can tell you some stories. She could tell you stories for days.” I ask him if it would be okay for me to leave my number with him so that he could text me when she was around and he agrees. I say text and not call intentionally, thinking a text is less intrusive, doesn’t take up his minutes in calling a stranger. He agrees and we walk back through the Bellevue gates, enter the security guard booth. He calmly hands me a pen and sets a piece of paper on the table. The air is comfortable, the company loose and trusting. I notice a log book with lots of red and black scribbles but I don’t want to seem intrusive. I write my name and number, thank him and he walks me out to the gates. Santos is a man willing to share what he has seen and experienced but obviously feels bound by his job. On multiple occasions, he tells me unprompted that he wishes he could take me inside but he would lose his job and as if to prove this says, “Here. Come with me. I can’t take you inside but I can show you this.” He takes me to the entrance of the psych ward and pushes a bush to the side with his arm to reveal a plaque on the wall covered in algae and soil. “I don’t read Roman numerals very well but believe me, its old.” We laugh and he releases the bush and it flies back to hide the plaque once again. He apologizes for not being able to let me in but I reassure him time and time again that I completely understand and tell him that I have been looking for a legitimate way to get inside. I ask him if they allow volunteers at the men’s homeless shelter. They do not. Everything is highly regulated and restricted. I tell him I will probably see him around and he tells me good luck.
Questions: The rooms are exactly the same. What is this stagnant nature about? Why remain the same when so much bad existed there? How have the past bodies imprinted themselves in the walls? The lines between bodies and buildings are becoming blurred. There have been serious rumblings from real estate developers of the old psych ward being turned into a fancy hotel and conference rooms. What does it mean to simply cover up the layered histories of the psych ward? What does it mean for the sordid conditions of the psych ward to be repainted and repaved for some of the wealthiest individuals in New York City? What happens to the voices of the ninth floor? Are they sealed within new drywall, muted by pink insulation or do they remain unscathed, haunting the new inhabitants that have paid millions of dollars for a top-floor penthouse overlooking the East River? Where do such voices, such spirits, the remnants of past inhabitants and workers go?
1st Avenue and East 27th Street: 12:40-1:10 PM, Main Lobby
I leave Santos and quickly enter the main lobby to jot down remaining thoughts and insights from our conversation and my observations which takes me 30 minutes.
1st Avenue and East 27th Street: 1:10-1:34 PM, Main Lobby
I buy lunch at the Au Bon Pain and begin eating lunch near the manikins wearing red. Above me in the three curved floors of the modern wing, I see a circled “C” on each floor indicative of the psych ward, one in orange and one in blue. I make a note to find out what these colors denote next time.
The building is not passive. It communicates with bodies just as bodies communicate with it. I am coming to terms with this, realizing that this is the challenge that I face and know that Michelle Murphy’s book, Sick Building Syndrome and the Problem of Uncertainty will be indispensable to the process of building my case. I realize too that few people believe the onus of an investigation can be placed on what is taken to be an inanimate object by many such as a building, that ethnographies are by their very nature studies of human beings. I have no doubt that buildings, being assemblages of human being’s ideas and energies, are worthy of any investigation that would normally be reserved for a flesh and bones human being. To offer an exploration of the flesh and bones of buildings and the indivisible co-existence between human beings and buildings is my challenge. I think as I sit there on that marble bench that at no time are people not physically touching the building whether walking, sitting, or leaning. People, once inside the building, are in constant communication with the forced boundaries of the structure.
An older Hispanic woman (perhaps in her 50′s) has an amputated leg and rolls herself in a wheel chair with a small boy to her left. She is slightly overweight, is dressed in a light floral top with short sleeves and a longer dark blue skirt made of heavy cotton, and carries joy in her facial expressions, crow’s feet showing at the corners of her eyes. She says, “Mira, mira,” to the child and points skyward to the translucent ceiling above. The child looks upwards and giggles. She pulls him closer in a warm embrace as I notice from behind her on her left, a young girl most likely in her teens comes up on crutches, both legs bandaged from the knees down. She speaks to the older woman and they both laugh. She is related somehow, a daughter or granddaughter perhaps. I watch as the girl moves past them and sits down hard on the marble benches a few feet down from where I am sitting and I wonder if they are recovering from a car accident. They have come to the hospital through pain and suffering of some sort but the older woman and boy seem joyous, the girl despondent in a common teenage way but seemingly happy. There is a multiplicity of emotion experienced within these walls.
I look up and notice that the modern wing is shaped like an eye pointing outwards to 1st Avenue. People can and do look over the glass walls of each floor to the lobby to where I sit below. I notice a man strapped down to a bed being pushed by two medics. He is a black man in his late 30′s and he peers down at me from the 2nd floor, C orange. “A psych patient?” I wonder and take further notice of the multiple black straps lining his torso and legs.
I look around and notice as I am sitting in a dynamic space where visitors and patients can view each other through the glass of each floor of the modern wing. It is a space of being watched and watching within a space of the Bellevue which is shaped like an eye.
1:29: Recording Made of Main Lobby
Audio Clip (Main Lobby): http://chirb.it/dz22Kd
The unnerving sound of a child crying from behind me can be heard. It seems to come from the walls themselves but I eventually look up to see an open window in the old administration building. The glass barriers on each floor are at least five feet high–someone would need to struggle to jump over. A white marble carving to my left of a man and a woman huddling with children sits poised precariously on a small slab of salmon and black marble. The scene depicted sends chills down my spine with the accompanying sound of the bloodcurdling screams of the child either in serious pain or scared out of its wits. A man in medical scrubs sits down next to me on the left with lunch and starts to eat. An older man in a fur-lined black jacket and well-pressed khaki pants sits down to my right and simply looks straight ahead. Two Chinese men in their early 30′s stand next to each other, silver cell phones in their right hands, bags of food with yellow smiley faces in their left. I make a note to study the presence of food deliverers at some later time and decide to leave.
Side Notes:
Treat 28th street as a feeder street into the eye of the Bellevue.
Spend next week on one of the C floors looking down.
Try to come again when Santos is working.
Photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/47478409@N06/sets/72157623382715999/
Research:
Weekends at Bellevue Review: http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/19/from-bellevues-psychiatric-er-a-doctors-memoir/
“Checkout Time At the Asylum” (NY Mag): http://nymag.com/news/features/52176/index1.html
- -In 1975, Saul Bellow memorialized him as Von Humboldt Fleisher in the novel Humboldt’s Gift: “To me, Bellevue was like the Bowery,” Bellow wrote. “It gave negative testimony. Brutal Wall Street stood for power, and the Bowery, so near it, was the accusing symbol of weakness. And so with Bellevue, where the poor and busted went … And poets like drunkards and misfits or psychopaths, like the wretched, poor or rich, sank into weakness—was that it? From Bellevue he phoned me … He yelled, ‘Charlie, you know where I am, don’t you? … This isn’t literature. This is life.’ ”
- Bellevue, he says, was “always a zoo. Never enough rooms, never enough space for people to be waiting—and the people who were waiting were not exactly calmly sitting around until they could be interviewed.” When patients came up the 29th Street ramp to the first-floor admitting area, “the majority were probably brought in by the police, since severely mentally ill people don’t have the insight to know they’re severely mentally ill. So usually you’d have cops all over the place in the psych ER.” Adding, literally, to the boiling-point atmosphere was the fact that the hospital had very spotty air-conditioning—a particular problem since summer heat waves exponentially increased the kind of behavior that tended to land patients in Bellevue in the first place.
-
After 54 years, the facility looked and felt outmoded. There were treatment rooms still filled with bathtubs covered with canvas sheets that left just enough room for a patient’s head to stick out; the huge basins, which were once thought to calm the manic, had lain unused for decades, museum relics of a less enlightened time.
- As for the actual rather than the figurative Bellevue, it’s now a more modern hospital, in a different building, in a new era. It seems unlikely that anybody would be sorry to see the words “Psychiatric Hospital” chipped off the northern entrance of its old quarters. And while the EDC’s plan to turn Bellevue into the latest in luxe accommodations has occasioned a certain number of jokes about the Sid Vicious Suite (yes, he’s an alum) and the Electric Kool-Aid Acid Casualty Atrium, those memories aren’t likely to have much traction. After all, nobody is more expert at eradicating swaths of urban history with great dispatch and little sentimentality than a real-estate developer.
Allen Ginsberg, “Howl”: http://sprayberry.tripod.com/poems/howl.txt
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