The Lives They Left Behind: Suitcases From a State Hospital Attic

An attic at the Willard Psychiatric Center in Romulus, N.Y., held the histories of former patients.

By PATRICIA COHEN
Published: December 7, 2007

TO a child a forgotten trunk in an attic opens the door to a beguiling fantasy world where a castoff shawl can be transformed into a king’s robe, a superhero’s cape or a genie’s flying carpet.

But the forgotten trunks and suitcases found in an attic at the abandoned Willard Psychiatric Center in the Finger Lakes region of New York represent the opposite: how the door to a desperately desired reality was closed to virtually all its patients.

The 427 suitcases, trunks, crates and bundles recovered after Willard closed in 1995 turned out to belong to patients who had spent decades in this vast state mental institution. In them were the remnants of lives left behind when their owners entered the locked gates.

Now a handful of artifacts once packed away, and the stories behind them, are on display at the New York Public Library’s Science, Industry and Business Library in Midtown through Jan. 31.

From the New York Times
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The slideshow of the exhibit is here, and it's heartbreaking.