8. Harlem Valley Psychiatric Center, Dover, New York
Harlem Valley Psychiatric Center once had its own stop on the Metro-North. The stop still exists, though instead of being called the Harlem Valley-State Hospital station, it’s now the Harlem Valley-Wingdale station. The Center opened in 1924 in Duchess County, about 70 miles north of Manhattan, as the Harlem Valley State Hospital. The nearly 900-acre property was largely self-sufficient. It boasted its own power plant, dairy farm (complete with an ice cream parlor), bakery, bowling alley, chapel, and cemetery. There was even a golf course for the doctors that was designed by golfer and course designer Donald Ross. “Well-behaved patients” reportedly were asked to serve as caddies.
The end came for Harlem Valley in 1994 when, like many other aging facilities of the time, new drugs and modern approaches to psychology made it obsolete. The site sat abandoned for twenty years before it was purchased by the current owner. Olivet University, an evangelical organization from California with a controversial reputation, founded by Korean pastor David Jang bought 503 acres of the former campus for $20 million. Untapped New York visited in 2020, the campus was partially renovated, with many areas still clearly abandoned.