Willowbrook State School was a state-supported institution for children with intellectual disabilities located in the Willowbrook neighborhood on Staten Island in New York City from the 1930s until 1987.
The school was designed for 4,000, but by 1965 it had a population of 6,000. At the time it was the biggest state-run institution for people with mental disabilities in the United States. Conditions and questionable medical practices and experiments prompted Sen. Robert Kennedy to call it a "snake pit."
Public outcry led to its closure in 1987, and to federal civil rights legislation protecting the disabled.
A portion of the grounds and some of the buildings were incorporated into the campus of the College of Staten Island, which moved to Willowbrook in the early 1990s. The rest of the buildings sit abandoned and dilapidated in the Staten Island Greenbelt.
Read more about Willowbrook State School: Miscellaneous
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