We created this video to serve as a record of the final moments of the Allentown State Hospital. If you want to see our video of the beautiful hospital intact, you can do so here - bit.ly/ASH_Video
Our concluding visit to the Allentown Hospital property was made in two parts - The night prior to, and the morning of the removal of the administration building. Or what little of it endured. Pulling up the old hospital drive we were unready for what we saw. Where a sprawling facility stood when last we visited, now only the very heart of the administration building remained. Little more than the central lobby and rooms immediately surrounding it stood in a muddy field, their edges splintered and ragged with exposed beams, its former limbs milled to rubble and spread around it in on half-frozen earth. It was once such an imposing sight, but now it looked utterly defeated and feeble. A sickening mix of grief and anger swelled inside, but it had nowhere to go, nowhere to be directed, so we cast it free in the cold evening air.
Within the lobby, most all of the ornamental details remained - Marble tiled walls and floors, gilded ironwork railings, stonework columns with carved capitals. All going down with the building, destined to be lost in some tragically misguided rush to clear the property for sale. The sun had now set, the last of its blonde rays flickering across the spire before all was covered in murky shadow. It was the last sunset that the hospital would ever witness, but at least it was a beautiful one. Before long the streetlamps hummed on, their pale yellow glow illuminating the front lawn and drive, but sadly absent were the lamps which once lighted the hospital itself. It stood there, a hulking mass of black just barely evident in the shadows beyond the lamplight. We left, to return just some hours later when the demolition crew arrived.
It was still blue out when we arrived around 6:30 am, but getting brighter by the minute. Demolition equipment slowly moved to the front of the property, arriving just as the sunrise started to crest the horizon. The brilliant pink of the morning was short-lived however, as an unexpected snow-shower blew in and cast the scene in a drab grey. Work began with the clawing away of the shortest, eastern wing, ripping out the innards of the old hospital as if it were a vulture picking apart the body of a dead animal. Before long the lobby was breached. We watched on as plaster, brick, and stone poured out of the wreckage. Punctuated at times by the removal of twisted railings from the lobby balcony and stairwells, as well as massive steel support beams. Eventually, too much of the frame was removed to support the immense spire which still adorned the roof, and it began to list to the side. It leaned and sunk into the roof as if toppling in slow motion. But it didn't. Abruptly it froze in place, coming to halt at an angle so unnatural that even the demolition crew seemed taken aback as they all paused to stare before clearing away from the walls, and retreating to safer ground. After no more than a minute the largest of the cranes returned to finish the task, and in short order the spire was felled, crumbling in upon itself, landing with a maelstrom of debris upon the marble floor of the once-magnificent lobby. The crane worked quickly on the spire, reducing its ornate, embossed form to scraps before any sense of loss could even set in. Within no more than ten minutes the tin and steel spire simply ceased to exist. The spire which stood over the community of Allentown for a century, spire which generations of people knew, the spire which was once a symbol of great pride, crumpled into a pile on the snow-covered dirt. Unrecognizable.
Not long after the spire fell the snowstorm gave way to sudden and dramatic sunshine over the rear of the building, casting brilliant beams of light through the haze of water mist that was now being pumped into the air by several turbine fans as a form of dust control. It would not be an exaggeration to say the scene was utterly heavenly, with almost unearthly golden beams of light cast some hundred or so feet in length, entering in through the gaping roof of the admin, where the spire stood just moments ago, and exiting through the missing windows on the face of the building. The centerpiece of this breathtaking scene was a three-story corpse, the absurd beauty of it all serving as the perfect conclusion to a series of events that should never have transpired. Within a few hours the last of the hospital was razed, and crews began work on grading the land and filling the tunnels. Thus ends the last night and final morning of the Allentown State Hospital - October 3, 1912 - December 28, 2020.
You can find the full story of the Allentown State Hospital on our site - bit.ly/Allento...
Music - 'Sopor' by Kai Engel & 'Misunderstood Soul' by Somnium Music
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