With demolition currently underway, it seems the Abandoned St. Joseph's Hospital Parry Sound will be just a memory But fortunately I have many pictures & a video to remember it by!
The original hospital was constructed sometime in the 1890's & was nothing more than a 3 storey wood house. Not long after construction began on the expansion of the hospital with the new section opening in 1907. As the region grew, so did the hospital with a four storey wing opening in 1938. Growth continued with a new two storey wing opening 20 years later. The hospital operated as such until 1995 when it merged with the Parry Sound District Hospital becoming the West Parry Sound Health Centre. Direction to build a new hospital by the province's Health Services Restructuring Commission resulted in the closure of the old hospital in 2005. Plans for the property are unclear at the time however due to a crumbling facade the town forced the owners to submit an engineering report of the stability of the structure as well, fencing was erected.
As with majority of my explores I like to start at the top & work my way down. There are two main reasons for this. The first being I can have a quick walk through & see if there are any hidden dangers such as hobo murderer ghosts! The second being if I am at the top & someone comes looking to yell/kick out/arrest me, I have a bit of time before they can actually get to me so I have time to grab a few more pics!
In 2019 I made two trips here & the first was with Zenning with Zay & the second with Freaktography. We had both explored the hospital before separately but it had been several years & we both were eager to see what mother nature had done to the old girl over the years. We had checked on it a few times over the winter but were unlucky with out timing however in May we were successful! A huge board had been removed from one of the windows & we easily made out way inside.
One thing that was blatantly obvious was the decay was far more advanced than when we both had previously explored it. Mind you there was plenty of decay several years ago but it now it was greatly amplified! We also noticed that although there was some, there really wasn't that much tagging or vandalism despite being virtually beside a high school! The owners for the most part had done an excellent job securing the building!
Moving along we enter one of the most popular rooms for explorers in the entire hospital. The X-Ray room! This room is just so cool with so much natural decay & of course the fact that in this mostly empty building there was still equipment....real cool equipment!
The next area that was easily ascertainable was the physio therapy room. This room still had some of the equipment left behind & it was also one of my favourite rooms due to the textures, tones & those awesome cupboards!
The rest of the hospital was equally decayed throughout & although a lot of the rooms were the same, there were plenty of photo opportunities before descending into the dark basement,
Before heading down into the basement I did a quick stop in the East Wing where there was a large room with plenty of windows leading me to believe this was a lounge type area. The outer wall here had become quite unstable forcing the city to take action against the property owners. The water pooling on the floor here made for some sweet reflections & colour!
I then headed to the main lobby of Abandoned St. Joseph's Hospital Parry Sound & theatre which was very decayed & photogenic!
Now it was time to venture into the basement. Down here was storage rooms, locker rooms, kitchen, auditorium, laundry facilities & lastly but also my favourite, the morgue. Unfortunately time had not been kind to the morgue area & the ceiling had collapsed on to the autopsy table so I included a picture from 2013 when it was in much better condition! The last two photos are the slab today & then 6 years ago.
The Abandoned St. Joseph's Hospital Parry Sound is slowly coming down & despite taking me a few years to finally visit it, I am glad I had the chance! A truly unique location!
Has this place been torn down yet? It looks like it’d be quite the adventure.
Sadly it has
Hi! Just watched this 11/30/20. The doctors panel was for them to flip the switch to signal to the operator they were in the hospital if they got a call. They would switch it off when they left.
Thanks for this walk down memory lane. I started out working on the dietary office and later went on to nursing school. That’s all behind me now but I remember the “golden age of medicine” when you could help patients without clearing it with a insurance company first. Sad.