Haunting Photos From 9 Of The World’s Creepiest Abandoned Hospitals

The Abandoned Hospital On Ellis Island

The Ellis Island Immigrant Hospital was the very first public health hospital in the United States. Now a spooky shadow of its former self, the abandoned hospital is still explorable through limited tours offered by Save Ellis Island, an official park partner of the National Park Service.

The hospital was built on two man-made islands constructed from leftover land dug up to build the Lexington Avenue subway line. At its peak, it treated more than one million Ellis Island immigrants. While the islands are now connected, they were originally separated by a ferry basin due to the erroneous belief that germs couldn’t travel across water.

One island held the general hospital, which had four operating rooms, one pediatric ward, one maternity ward, one psychiatric ward, and one woman’s ward. This area also had a state-of-the-art laundry room for its time, capable of processing thousands of clothing items per day.

The other island was focused on contagious disease. The pavilion-style hospital design was suggested by Florence Nightingale, and patients with different diseases inhabited separate wards to curb infection. Unfortunately, its conditions weren’t ideal.

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Ellis Island has several stories — but none scarier than those in the hospital rooms.Flickr

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From 1901 until 1924, more than 1.25 million people passed through the Ellis Island immigration hospital.Flickr

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Liberty Island provides hope to millions — but not from the view of the Ellis Island hospital.Flickr

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A dilapidated hospital room at Ellis Island.Flickr

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Patients in this now abandoned hospital were separated by disease.Flickr

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The staircase at Ellis Island.Flickr

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The filthy abandoned hospital and administration building.Flickr

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Another beautiful and artistic mural on the brick walls of the Ellis Island hospital.Flickr

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The majority of the Ellis Island immigrants were poor, and came to the United States to do manual labor.Flickr

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One hallway led to freedom — the other led to the hospital.Flickr

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This was often the first sight that many incoming immigrants saw.Flickr

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More elegant art with an ocean view.Flickr

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If these walls of the abandoned hospital could talk, they would tell quite the tale, for sure.Flickr

The Abandoned Hospital For Immigrants On Ellis Island

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Though small standing rooms connected to quarantined wards allowed doctors to examine patients without even entering their rooms, the island broke countless families apart. Some immigrants weren't even ill, but anti-immigrant fears led to perceived sicknesses and unnecessary hospitalization.

A fungal disease as treatable as favus, for instance, would result in deportation — unless the patient was forcibly hospitalized for an entire year. Most immigrant families were unable to afford the latter, and the former requiring an entirely new attempt at entering the United States.

But the Ellis Island Immigrant Hospital also nursed countless people back to health and allowed them to prosper. More than 10,000 patients from 75 different countries were treated in one year, and many of the 350 children born there were named after the doctors and nurses.

As immigration regulations tightened in the late 1920s, the hospital saw fewer and fewer patients before it shut down in 1930. In 1954, the Coast Guard declared the land "excess federal property" and the two clinics and the land they sat on were officially abandoned.