The Creedmoor Psychiatric Center is an enormous facility on the edge of Eastern Queens that has been abandoned since the 1970s. After rumors of violence within the facility culminated with the murder of a patient at the hands of a blackjack-wielding staff member, Creedmoor closed its doors. Now that it has been reduced to a tiny, mostly outpatient operation, the majority of the abandoned facility’s gigantic campus has since become a well known hot spot for urban exploration junkies.
The long, twisted corridors of Building 25 are probably the most frequented area of Creedmoor’s extinct interior. But besides the omnipotence of massive bird poop piles, many urban explorers would also be surprised to discover that Creedmoor was once used as an NYPD police station. Under City Sun contributor Dock Ellis got the scoop.
The Police Station is located in Building 70, a structure that Dock Ellis claims was “re-purposed as low-rent office space for the NYPD.” One peek at the building’s three floors reveals that there is no doubt of a fairly extensive Police operation that was set up in what used to be dormitories for patients. Judging by the names of street-level drug informants such as”Paco” that can be found on the walls of Building 70, it’s obvious that this was once the home of the NYPD’s Queens North Narcotics Division.
But perhaps what’s even creepier than the abandoned Narcotics Division office is a map of Afghanistan that signifies the spot where the Queens Intelligence Division used to operate on the building’s second floor. This remnant of New York’s post-9/11 era is made more eery by the ghostliness of its current condition, and it’s no surprise then to discover that several documents around the office reveal that the NYPD wanted to abandon Creedmoor six years before they were actually permitted to leave behind the facility.
That wasn’t the last time human feet would voluntarily set foot in Building 70 though. In 2010, many parts of Building 70 were used to film The Normals, an independent movie centered around a Harvard student whose personal scheme requires him to enroll in a clinical drug trial. To us, it may sound like a missed opportunity that such a lightweight movie would be made there and not use the building’s spooky ambiance to its full potential. On the other hand though, the vials of fake blood that were left behind are sure to spook anybody brave enough to traverse the abandoned Police Station themselves.
Find out more by contacting the author at @douglascapraro.