Prev: Culture of Abuse Re: "We know that hospitals are dangerous places if you don't need to be there," Dr. Eliot Fisher, who also led the study, said.
Next: Bellevue will finally be home to people who ought
From: Linda on 9 Apr 2008 21:32
X-No-Archive:Yes

http://www.nypost.com/seven/04012008/news/regionalnews/loony__b_inn_104462.htm
LOONY (B)INN
BELLEVUE EYED AS LUXE HOTEL
By JEREMY OLSHAN
ROOM WITH A 'VUE: A hotel may go up in the building housing the old
psych ward at Bellevue where horse-drawn ambulances, here in 1896,
once picked up patients and where actress Edie Sedgwick once checked
in.

April 1, 2008 --

Guests at Bellevue will soon be given bathrobes instead of
straitjackets, if the city can convince a developer to turn its most
famous nut house into a luxe hotel.

City officials yesterday said they're confident the hospital's old
psychiatric ward, which until the mid-1980s provided something short
of four-star accommodations to countless kooks and criminals, would
help fill a void in Manhattan's East Side medical corridor.

VOTE: Would you stay at a swanked-up Bellevue hotel?

Originally, officials considered turning the 1931 Italian Renaissance-
style building on First Avenue between 29th and 30th streets into
condos, but oddly, the layout of a mental institution is better suited
to a hotel, Melissa Konur, vice president of the city's Economic
Development Commission, told The Post.

"There are long corridors, and the rooms aren't very big," she said.

Even though officials expect the hotel and convention center would be
marketed toward medical professionals and families of patients at
nearby hospitals, it would be up to developers to deal with the
building's sordid past.

Not many hotels can claim Norman Mailer, Edie Sedgwick and Charlie
Parker all spent the night, but the psych ward housed fewer sax
players than ax murderers, said Dr. Frederick Covan, who for 14 years
was its chief psychologist.

"Our patients were not normal New York neurotics, but very sick people
- otherwise known as crazy," Covan said.

"Most of the names were not recognizable, but we had one guy who
bashed his mother's brains in with an iron and then did gynecological
surgery on her," he said.

Covan, who always looked fondly on the old building even after the
wards moved to new digs in 1986, said he would love to spend the night
in his old office on the ninth floor.

"I think it would make a great hotel," he said. "I'm sure it would be
a little unsettling to people, but for some, it might also be a
draw."

There were lean years when the hallways were overflowing with beds,
but in general, the hospital had the best forensic and diagnostic
staff, he said.

Covan, who got the top job in 1980, said he doubts a suite in the
hotel would be named for the ward's most infamous resident, Mark David
Chapman, John Lennon's murderer.

"When I first knew I was going to see him, I was worried my anger
toward him would interfere with my ability to do my job," he said.
"But he was such a pathetic character. I said 'hello,' and he smiled -
then he said, 'Oh, excuse me. I shouldn't be smiling.' "

The 400,000-square-foot psych building features wonderful
architectural detail, although much of it is in miserable condition.

Chapman stayed in the second-floor prison ward. There also were
pediatric and adolescent wards, and a violent ward "where if you
weren't violent already, you would be once they put you there," Covan
said.

jeremy.olshan(a)nypost.com

From: Twittering One on 10 Apr 2008 15:40
At the Drop-in center where I was in 2006, there are computers, but
they rarely let guests use them.

I realize they have concerns over safety of expensive quipment; but
comps are there to use and break down isolation with the rest of the
world.

The comps were available about an hour or 2, once or twice a week, an
hardly ever predictable.
 | 
Pages: 1
Prev: Culture of Abuse Re: "We know that hospitals are dangerous places if you don't need to be there," Dr. Eliot Fisher, who also led the study, said.
Next: Bellevue will finally be home to people who ought