Inside Fort Totten Part 2: The Army Hospital

A tin ceiling crumbles in an Army Hospital dayroom.

Constructed in 1906, the Fort Totten Army Hospital has been vacant since the area was decommissioned as a military base in the mid 70s.  Today, this once thriving infirmary with a 68-bed capacity exhibits a harrowing level of decay.  Beneath an attractive Colonial Revival facade, hospital rooms self-destruct in slow motion.

Originally known as the Post Hospital, and later named after Dr. Walter Reed, the medical center is situated on a scenic bank of the Long Island Sound on the southeast portion of Willet’s Point, in an area currently under the jurisdiction of the NYC Fire Department.  A newly renovated training facility, which once served the military as a barracks and mess hall, sits directly behind the hospital, a prime example of the potential for adaptive reuse of the installation’s vast collection of dilapidated buildings.

Most are in a state of limbo, awaiting a white knight to cough up the millions necessary to preserve and repurpose the structures, but unfortunately, Walter Reed Hospital is long past the point of no return.

Inside, a nearly complete lack of artifacts disappoints, but allows the structural degeneration to take center stage.  Watch your step—some doorways give way to a two-story chasm, filled with jagged debris and splintered beams.  Buckling walls, bulging floors, and collapsed light fixtures mingle in the wretched sea-foam green interior.  Its a preservationist’s worst nightmare, but it only scratches the surface of Fort Totten’s decay.

With a third of the property somewhat maintained by the Parks Department, the grounds are currently open to the public.  It’s worth the trip to see this moribund military base while most of its history remains (precariously) intact.  With some of the last remaining open spaces in Queens, this little known park makes a perfect picnic spot, but I wouldn’t sit too close to its ill-fated infirmary—Fort Totten Army Hospital is falling down. 

(For more on the past, present, and future of Fort Totten, see Part 1.)

-Will Ellis

Related Links:

• Fort Totten Historic District Designation Report
• Fort Totten History from the Bayside Historical Society 
• NYTimes 1999 “Fort Totten’s Old Houses are Tottering”
• NYTimes 2003 “Nearer to a Fort Totten Park but Not to a Consensus”
• Scouting NY—A Snowy Day at Fort Totten

“Demolition by Neglect”

This 1926 kitchen annex was the hospital’s latest addition, but it’s one of the first areas to collapse.

A devastated room on the first floor.

Tread carefully.

Vines take root in a first floor bathroom.

Dangling fluorescent fixtures in Room 27.

A perilous corridor, with the basement visible through a hole in the floor.

One level down, the entrance to a supply room.

Even this small utility room was done in sea-foam green.

A chair left in the basement was one of the only remaining pieces of furniture.

A rag sways in the breeze from a basement window.

The attic, distinguished by angled ceilings and dormer windows.

Rotting walls on the fourth floor.

Someone wasn’t happy with their room number.

For more Queens abandonments, check out:

• Houdini’s Grave, in NYC’s Spookiest Cemetery

• Inside Creedmoor State Hospital’s Building 25

• The Rockaway Beach Branch, Queens’ Forgotten Railroad

  

  Click through for Part 1 of this post.