When Edgewood was still standing, most of us were too young to truly appreciate it. While some of us hung out there, and some of us had a hand in mercilessly vandalizing it, most of us never thought to take pictures or collect news clippings. The complex was not a huge part of my own life, but it was just "always there" and taken for granted. My parents referred to it as Pilgrim State, and I didn't know any different. (Technically they were correct, since Edgewood became an extension of Pilgrim, but it was still a seperate entity.) To this day I can not help but turn my head while driving down Commack Rd., expecting to see "Pilgrim State." Edgewood's main building was demolished on my fifteenth birthday - August 16, 1989.

Although I did not have Edgewood pictures of my own, I had searched for them on the internet for a while. For years, the only picture I was able to find was on Arrt's Arrchives. I had been wanting to start an Edgewood site for some time, but without any content at all, the site would have been useless. Since the late summer of 2003, I started noticing a sudden increase in interest in Edgewood, from people posting on message boards. Most of the messages were spewing the same old frustrations - "Does anyone remember Edgewood? Does anyone have any pictures?"

One day while browsing LI Oddities, I came across some vintage Edgewood pictures that were contributed by Denis Byrne. This confirmed what I had hoped for all along - there ARE people out there who have "Edgewood stuff", but it was going to take some time to find these people and compile it all together.

Since I did not have pictures to contribute, I decided to research the history of the hospital, for another section of the site. The majority of the newspaper articles I found have inconsistent information, and major gaps in the timeline. Not even Pilgrim Psychiatric Center's own museum had anything on Edgewood, besides a couple of generic pictures.

The vast majority of the material on thie site is due to visitor contributions. If not for the kids who hung out there, there would be almost no history of this place at all. Although we have compiled a respectable number of pictures and news articles, I believe there is still a goldmine out there waiting to be discovered. Someone, somewhere has more.

If you have something to share and you are interested in contributing to the site and helping to preserve the memory of Edgewood, please email us.

Site Developer and Webmaster: Joe
Initial Launch Photo Contributions: Denis Byrne and Slappy Hornicker