Farewell, Kirkbride

The end has come.

For years there have been battles over the fate of the Kirkbride administration building at what used to be the Greystone Park psychiatric hospital. When N.J. Gov. Christie Whitman, after a number of scandals involving the century-old hospital and its outdated facilities and leaky security, had the hospital closed down and a newer, smaller hospital built on the western-most end of the property, the bulk of the land was sold to Morris County for $1 and became a park.

The stone wards built to stand the test of time came down. The space is open and green. There are ball fields, playgrounds and, late in coming, hiking trails. But Kirkbride stood, a decaying hulk, on state-owned land. Nearby stood two "cottages" and the old train station.

Many plans were circulated to "save" the historic old building, the wonder of its age with the largest continuous foundation in the world until the Pentagon was built in Virginia. But each plan included residential housing and commercial space and many, including me, were worried about the effect on the park and the populations of Parsippany, where the hospital was located, and Morris Plains, literally just down Central Ave., which leads to Kirkbride's doors.

Legislation was introduced to tear the structure down and turn the state land over to the county to add to the park. Morris County is one of the more congested counties in the most congested state in the U.S., so opening more parkland to the community rather than putting up hundreds of townhouses - creating hundreds more cars and people with their traffic and demand on local services - is a better idea.

The people who wanted to preserve the Greystone building as an example of fine architecture claimed a deal had been rammed through the legislature to pull the building down without due process or public input. Had more people complained, it wouldn't have happened, they claimed.

I am not so sure.

I've written about this battle many times before and I maintain my opposition to anything that would have added more people to the area. That this proposed development - shops and luxury apartments plus a museum of mental health was in the latest plan - would've taken place in an already established county park made the whole thing seem ludicrous. The park is crowded enough when there are soccer or lacrosse or cross-country events but where do you put the parking for the stores and the apartments?

The issue went to court and there were rallies, but the court did not stop the demolition.

So bit by bit, the building has come down. First the back buildings and "cottages" that flanked Kirkbride, then the back part of the building. Each day, more comes down. About the only thing standing was the main entrance. I wondered if the preserver people were going to get their wish - toward the end they harped on that museum of mental health more than shops or apartments.

But the other week, the newspaper reported the head of Preserve Greystone had thrown in the towel, saying too much had been taken down for the building to be of use. Last week, the ornamentation around the windows and doors was removed, and I hope they aren't dumped in the meadowlands as part of the old, beloved Pennsylvania Station were discovered to be.

So it will be only a matter of time before the last of it comes down, the debris removed and the fencing. At some point, the land will be taken over by the county and the old farm buildings in the back, from the days when Greystone was built to allow inmates to work in the country air, will be removed and perhaps trails put in for hiking. Before then, people have been coming by to take pictures of the building, as I have here.

There is a lot about the Central Park of Morris County I do not like. I did not like seeing forests taken down for the soccer/lacrosse field. I did not like the long wait before something resembling a trail was put in. I am not crazy about the disc golf course put in across the road, which means I must be even more aware of my surroundings when I am walking around the old ice pond or hiking up the hill than usual.

But I agree with the removal of Kirkbride. If the state wanted to preserve it, it should have done so when the building was newly abandoned and the park not yet created. It could've done a lot with the old stone building but instead it left it to rot, and then said it was too expensive to rehabilitate it. I wouldn't have wanted my county or state taxes going to pay for that.

So I say farewell to you, Kirkbride, and hope your ghosts find another resting place.

My State of Birding

The other day I was looking at the New Jersey bird list and found a reference to a "Morris Plains Pacific loon." Morris Plains is a small borough in northern New Jersey.

I didn't know which was more startling, a Pacific loon from the west found in New Jersey or a Pacific loon found at all in MY TOWN.




My photo of the Pacific loon, Morris Plains, NJ

 The loon, a juvenile, had been in the area for five days by then - as of today it is still being seen (and a second one was found even more recently at Lake Parsippany a few miles away!).

I was angry as hell that I'd missed it all that time but quickly caught up the next day by getting MH away from his books and papers and grabbing our binoculars and cameras to rush to the pond where it had been found, in an otherwise ugly office park at the edge of our town, literally five minutes away.

We saw the loon, we took our pictures (semi-decent because even with a long lens the bird was still too far for me) and even got to see that ringnecked ducks, redbreasted mergansers and hooded mergansers were in the pond, with a lovely redtailed hawk in the clear blue, chased by two less-than-happy American crows.

Another photo I took.

A good day, I thought. It's not often an unusual bird is found in my "backyard" and easy to see during a workday break. Oh, the joy of working from home.

Then, that evening, I was checking the list again and came upon a post that amazed me.

It was from a Bayonne (NJ) birder who posts regularly. Something set him off, however. A gyrfalcon had been found at Gilgo Beach off Fire Island in NY and, I'm gathering by his post, the bird chasers had gotten out of hand.

In "The state of birders/birding" he wrote:

It seems that the current atmosphere favors the "birder" and not the "birdwatcher." With RTD (real-time data), listers (chasers) seem more numerous than "birdwatchers." This concerns me because then it is sport (the extreme) and not science (the desire). Obviously, most fall somewhere in between.

Well, he's right about that. Many are the times I've complained about people who take the fun of birding much too seriously, traveling miles just for a glimpse, lugging gun-like lenses and trampling the environment in the process. In its extreme, it's the plot of the movie "The Big Year."

At the office park we met one woman who had driven two hours north from Gloucester County in south Jersey. (This wasn't odd to us as we've been known to drive two hours south for the same reason. But we always combine that with other things, such as visiting a bookstore.) Another woman there said that on a whim she decided to throw her dog in the car and drive over -- from Delaware.

Talk about a loon!

So yes, there are nutcases out there who time their movements to those of the birds.

But here is where Mr. Bayonne got me mad.

This all goes back to grade school. As far as I can tell, most lurk and wait for the "real birders" to "find" and report birds that they then "chase." Boil it down and these are the people that copied homework back in the day.

Now wait a minute, buster. I don't LURK.

Those "real birders" must not need money because they are reporting odd birds in far-flung areas every day. MH and I can only do any real birding on the weekends because during the week we have a little thing called WORK to do.

That's why I go to the list, to see what's out there so during my precious free weekend time I am not going off half-cocked. It gives me an idea, and then it's up to me to interest MH in joining me on the drive.

I don't cotton to being called a homework copier.

I don't put myself in the same league as those who read the list, learn of a gyrfalcon 500 miles away and then go nuts trying to get to it, find it and take a picture of it for his or her Flickr page. As MH likes to say, it's supposed to be a hobby.

Most times, whether I go with MH or alone, I don't find anything worthy of such frenzy, even if I wanted to report it. (I read the list but I am not a subscriber; only subscribers can report.) Most times I go out and find birds and am happy to see them, especially familiar ones I haven't seen for a while, such as the brown creeper or the bluebird. If someone else reports to the list about a flock of redhead ducks on nearby Lake Parsippany, as one did the other week, I plan my time and energy accordingly.

During weekdays I must content myself with the wonders of my own backyard.

Redtail picture by RE Berg-Andersson

For instance, the redtailed hawk above decided to just hang out for a while one day, and then it came for short periods during the next two days. Redtails are buteos. They like to eat squirrels, among other small mammals, so the ones in my yard disappeared as soon as this hawk flew in. The feeder birds knew they'd be left alone because it wasn't hunting, just sitting. However, the 200 grackles that were about to divebomb the feeders quickly took off from the surrounding trees.

...time to get out and find your own birds...might be the most fun you ever had;) he concluded.

Oh, I will, boy-o, I will indeed, as I do almost every weekend.

And when I do find an unusual bird - like the greater shearwater along a New Jersey beach or the sedge wren found in the wet grass of Somerset County's Lord Sterling Park, both seen a few years ago - I ain't gonna be reporting that news to anyone for the very reason that pissed you off about the gyrfalcon: the resulting overkill by zealous birders.

On that, Mr. Bayonne and I agree.

Otherwise, to Hell with him.

Ghosts and Greystone

If you walk up Central Avenue, past the homes in Morris Plains, you come to a fork in the road. To the right is Collins Road, a short street with a dog park at the other end.

Greystone now, along Central Avenue

If you continue up Central Ave. you will pass wide expanses of grassy meadow, old trees, several athletic fields and the offices of the ARC and the Interfaith Pantry.
It’s a wide street and a pleasant walk, especially on a sunny day. Many walk or ride their bicycles. Many drive this road as a shortcut to and from Parsippany to points beyond. In the middle of a weekday and you’ll find cars and trucks parked in the shade as people take their breaks, talking on the phone, checking messages, sleeping.

This is now officially Central Park of Morris County, but to me it will always be Greystone.

The park now looks very different from when I first moved to Morris Plains and decided to walk up Central Ave. to the end. I knew what was there. My husband, who grew up in Morris County, had told me about what was once the State Asylum for the Insane at Morristown until the name was changed to the more prosaic Greystone Park.

When I walked Central Ave. past that fork in the road the street was lined with empty, hulking, stone structures, bars still on the upper windows and the first floor boarded to keep people out.

At the end of Central Ave. was the administration building, still in use at the time. I knew the other buildings were deserted, the patients moved to smaller buildings elsewhere on the property, but I still felt as though I was being watched.

Greystone's administration building, one of the ghosts.

What changed was in the 1990s the hospital was so overcrowded and conditions were so horrendous it was ordered shut down and a more state of the art facility built. The state decided to sell what land it didn't need to Morris County for $1 and built the hospital on the western-most edge of the property.
If you walk along Central Ave. now, as I do many days, it is an enjoyable experience, one I’d encourage you to do. The grass is long and filled with wildflowers. Birds - sparrows, mockingbirds, warblers in season - sing from the stately old trees. It is a place of peace.

When you walk you’ll see driveways and lanes that end in grassy fields, where the buildings once stood. Young trees will form a canopy over Central Ave. in a few years. I don’t go to the sporting events but walking around the fields I can tell a lot of work was done to erase those ghosts.

That’s the county property. The property still held by the State of New Jersey and not used for the hospital is very different. At the end of Central Ave. the administration building still looms. Nearby are other structural reminders of the past and decaying roads to them, all festooned with No Trespassing signs.

I do not know what the state plans to do with that land. There was talk - there is always talk in Trenton - that the remaining buildings would be pulled down and the land sold to developers.

At the moment our Republican governor, from Morris County, has said nothing about his intentions toward the property. I would prefer the buildings come down but the fields remain open. You can never get enough open space in New Jersey and there is already too much traffic into my town thanks to several large, recent housing and townhouse developments up the road in neighboring Parsippany.

There have been efforts by some local politicians and private groups to forestall any development while keeping the administration building standing because of its historic value.

But looking up at that building - the parking signs for long-gone officials still up, the lower windows boarded and graffitied, the starlings coming through the broken upper windows - my preference is to pull it down.

It’s too far gone to be useful to anything except the birds and the ghosts.

Update: After the first version of this post, which lacked a headline and this version now replaces, was published on this blog and by the Morris Plains Patch earlier this week I heard from several people, both for and against taking down the administration building. One woman lectured me on "obviously" not knowing the history of the mental institution, which I do know but did not include in the interests of space, and because it wasn't germane to my central point. There are links above that will take you to sites detailing the history, if you are interested. My feeling about bringing the buildings down but leaving the land alone are unchanged, mainly because I don't trust the state of New Jersey in these tough budget times to do anything useful with these deteriorating buildings.

In the dark

For about five years I would have to get up at 3:45 a.m. to catch a 5:20 a.m. train and be at the office in Jersey City by 7 a.m. I always woke in the dark and most of the time I walked in the dark, too. The short period of a month before and after Memorial Day would allow me to walk at dawn and listen to the singing of warblers, finches and the Big 4 of robin, cardinal, song sparrow and catbird. (The most I have heard at one time those dawn mornings over the years was 23 different types of bird.)

Since changing to more normal hours I've come to appreciate what I had while walking in the dark. I learned the constellations and traveled with a moon shadow. Most house lights were off and except for adults delivering newspapers from their cars (no more the boy or girl on the bicycle), I was usually alone in my travels. Unlike life in New York City, the only thing I feared most during these trips was spooking a skunk. I was never sprayed, thankfully, even when I practically kicked a young one sitting at the edge of a dark road.

Seeing deer was a given, although the 15 that ran out of a yard in a freight train-like line stopped me in my tracks. I've also seen racoon, possum and red fox, including one that sat literally in the intersection of two roads until I walked close to it.

If you go out at night when the sky is clear and the moon is full during migration season you can see the birds cross the moon and - listen carefully - hear the flight calls. I'm not experienced enough to be able to tell you what I am hearing, but just hearing them is a thrill.

But what I miss most, however, is the calling owls.

I heard what you would expect - the hoo-hoo-hoo of the great horned owl, the whinny of the screech owl.

But I have heard the screech owl actually screech (it isn't pretty) and once I heard the "who cooks for you, who cooks for you all" of the barred owl.

And then there was the time I heard the most unearthly screaming, sounds that were not of this world. I have since learned they came from a barn owl that must have been passing through and decided to sit in a tree over our town's brook.

Nowadays I come home in daylight and once in the house I stay put. When it gets dark I am usually getting ready for bed. But there are times I get up in the night and stand by an open window, hoping to hear one of the owls.

I was lucky once - a brood of noisy great horned owls yowling in my backyard. I threw on a robe and ran out and listened. Momma Owl saw me, of course, and I could hear the yowling move off when I tried to see them. I never did.

Maybe it's the degree of difficulty that makes night owls so special. MH and I once saw a snowy owl on a pier in Piermont, NY, where it had been for some weeks drawing a crowd. It looked bored when we saw it. Snowys hunt by day so seeing this was easy. So was the short-earred owl we saw at a grasslands in upstate New York.

More difficult, and thus more satisfying, was seeing long-earred owl. I wrote last time about the ones at Great Swamp but the first one I saw was in Central Park, and I had come in just to see it. Marie Winn was kind enough to let me know where in the Pinetum it was but it was still hard to see.

But there was a woman on a bench with her small dog and she painstakingly guided my eyes to the dark shape in the pine. I thanked her profusely. She said she and several other park regulars were being very protective of the owl, and I can understand why.

It might be time to start taking night walks again...