You sort of get an idea of what a region’s abandoned locations are going to look and feel like. Not to diminish any of the numerous places I've been too, but as time and vandalism take their toll on these locations, it sometimes shaves them down to common elements. Exposed brick and rotting wood make some memories run together. Was that the Old Shipping Depot or the Porcelain Incident? Was that way back when in the Lambertville High School, or at the fabled Cropsey hospital? These places are, of course, legends in their own right, but accessibility and proximity breeds familiarity, and they eventually become places with an objective (such as filming or photography) rather than some sort of escape or adventure.
.HEIC)
Driving hours out into the middle of nowhere to discover SCI Cresson sitting on a hill immediately inspired such a feeling of wanderlust.
In a previous outing (at the American Treasure Tour), I had first learned about Cresson through word of mouth. Perhaps due to it only recently becoming easily accessible to the public, or even how "recently" it ceased formal operations, I had never even heard of the property before this year. In the wake of its final formal closing in 2013, it surely still sat in some sort of legal limbo. It never came across my desk or screen as an abandoned property. It was just a far-off closure of a state institution, and I hadn't crossed paths with photos from particularly adventurous urban explorers. It was likely very difficult and a legal nightmare to visit back then. But now, the antithesis of my previous statement regarding proximity, with time and decay, the state of this location has made it into one of the single most impressive properties I've ever seen in these travels. I say that with zero exaggeration.
It began its life as a tuberculosis sanatorium, running from 1913 to 1964 in Cresson, Pennsylvania. Apparently, the land was donated by the steel magnate Andrew Carnegie. It's pretty high up in the Allegheny Mountains and that kind of air quality was prized for treating respiratory illnesses. The main buildings on the property were Tudor-style stone architecture, with sandstone carvings and slate roofs. I incorrectly (but refuse to correct myself) refer to these as the "Swiss Miss Mansions."
When tuberculosis ceased being such an imposing threat on the public, the need for a sanatorium dropped away. So, in the 1950s, the state converted the property into a state hospital. It was named after Lawrence F. Flick and functioned primarily as a care and housing institution for individuals with severe intellectual disabilities and chronic mental illnesses.
In the last state of its operational life, it was transferred to the Bureau of Corrections in 1983. A $20m renovation introduced modern cell blocks, security perimeters, and razor wire directly into the existing stonework. It reopened in 1987 as SCI Cresson, a medium-security state prison for men and it would serve as a structural model for several other state prisons during that decade. It housed high-profile inmates like John du Pont and Joseph Kallinger. They could have been the best/worst neighbors ever, but Kallinger died in 1996 at the institution, the same year that du Pont became a killer.
Later on, in the early 2010s, SCI Cresson became the target of a major investigation by the DOJ. The prison routinely placed inmates with severe diagnosed mental illnesses into solitary confinement for twenty-three hours a day for prolonged periods. For months, or even years. Due to the mounting legal and operational costs, the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections officially decommissioned and closed SCI Cresson in June 2013.
And now that brings us to the present day.
All of this history gives contexts to the things you see on a visit to the property, but having not known various details, it felt like wandering into a dream (or nightmare) composed of only the faintest notion of "public hospital." Cresson almost feels like a sprawling movie studio or some sort of macabre amusement park. Every building screams "institutional," but hardly adheres to a coherent or consistent design style. The "Swiss Miss Mansion" looks like it was taken out of Harry Potter. The cellblocks look like they were a set for the Walking Dead. The chapel looks ripped from a Mike Flanagan production, and the sanatorium buildings look like a loose adaptation of the Shining. All of this... on top of being on the same hilltop, surrounded by literal barbed-wire, high-security fences. It’s a thematic nightmare and comes together oh so wonderfully.
It's beautiful and it's absurd, made even more bizarre by the fact that the only real entrance is through a Corrections checkpoint that reads like a hospital waiting room, or a prison visitation building from the 1980s. But the actual, shining, cherry on top is the fact that there are still tunnels running under most of the property (that were accessible and surprisingly clean to maneuver). Except for the lone, charred mannequin head that I locked eyes with at barely five feet of separation only after activating my flashlights. Good lord.
One day, I will return. My first visit to Cresson felt too short and I'm not sure how much as a percentage I even managed to cover. Maybe 60%? Each building seemed to have at least four floors and had its own distinct style. When I wrote in the beginning of this piece about locations blurring together, I believe that Cresson will eventually exacerbate this feeling, as the wide variety of buildings contained at this one property covers the entire gamut of urban exploration. In a way, it’s sort of an Epcot of the urbex world, at least for this traveler.
I hope to get lost in the sprawling, beautiful madness again sometime soon.
