New York’s Staten Island — Soon, a structure that was once a home of horrors for people with developmental disabilities might become a national emblem of inclusion and advancement.
A proposal to turn Building 29 on the former Willowbrook State School property into a Center for Learning that will acknowledge the site’s historical significance was celebrated Wednesday by the New York State Office for People With Developmental Disabilities (OPWDD), local disability advocates, and elected officials. This proposal sparked significant changes in the way developmentally disabled people are housed and cared for nationwide.
According to Kim Hill Ridley, Chief Disability Officer at New York State, repurposing the former Willowbrook School campus as a Center for Learning is a fitting project to honor and learn from our past while staying focused on the future, particularly with regard to inclusion and deinstitutionalization.
Former Willowbrook State School inmate Bernard Carabello, who lived in the notorious institution for 18 years of his life, was present to commemorate the advancements he helped bring about through decades of activism.
This essential cash, which was revealed today, will be used for programs in a facility where I was raised as a little boy. According to Carabello, “I never would have thought that the building I slept in back at Willowbrook would be used for research to benefit people with developmental disabilities like those who grew up here.”
Former Willowbrook State School resident Bernard Carabello applauded a plan to convert the structure where he was once kept into a Center for Learning. (Erik Bascome/Staten Island Advance)Erik Bascome/Staten Island Advance
The Center for Learning will commemorate and acknowledge the historical role played by the former Willowbrook residents and their family advocates in igniting the disability rights movement in New York State and in shaping the country’s developmental disability service system.
In order to ensure that the past is not forgotten, the new facility will feature items from the Willowbrook archives to inform visitors about the horrors that have occurred there in the past and the advancements that have been made subsequently.
OPWDD Acting Commissioner Willow Baer stated, “We continue to learn from the history of institutionalization of people with disabilities in New York State and the country every day, making a goal of full community inclusion the heart of everything we do, alongside our self-advocates, families, and provider partners.”
Governor Kathy Hochul’s FY 2026 Executive Budget proposal includes a $75 million investment to modernize OPWDD’s Institute for Basic Research on Staten Island, including the construction of a Genomics Core Facility to enable personalized identification of genetic defects underlying individuals’ disabilities. This investment includes the establishment of the Center for Learning.
According to Hochul, New Yorkers should have access to cutting-edge genetics research in order to enhance treatments for those with developmental disorders. By transforming a communal area into a nationally acclaimed Center for Learning, this project hopes to preserve heritage while promoting cutting-edge therapies and educational possibilities.
In order to carry out research, enhance diagnosis and prevention, offer specialist therapeutic services, and inform the public about developmental impairments, the Institute for Basic Research was established in 1968.
Along with educating the public, researchers, and health and education professionals about the causes, diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of developmental disabilities, the Institute offers comprehensive, specialized biomedical, psychological, and laboratory services to individuals with developmental disabilities and their families.
The proposed $75 million investment would be the largest single financial commitment to the Institute in state history, according to Michael Cusick, president and CEO of the Staten Island Economic Development Corporation (SIEDC) and a former Assemblymember who was instrumental in averting the Institute for Basis Research’s 2003 closure.
Governor Hochul has demonstrated the state’s dedication to preserving the legacy and legacy of Willowbrook State School with this funding, making sure that the tragedy is never forgotten and bolstering IBR’s purpose to promote research and enhance lives, Cusick added.
Two of the borough’s state-level elected representatives were present to express their support for this important financing, even though there is still more work to be done to guarantee that the plan is included in the final state budget.
In order to guarantee that my constituents, especially those with disabilities, have access to the care and support they require in order to live with dignity, this financing represents a significant milestone. State Senator Jessica Scarcella-Spanton (D-North Shore/South Brooklyn) stated that these enhancements would result in significant, life-altering breakthroughs that will improve the quality of life for individuals with disabilities, reaffirming New York’s dedication to the most vulnerable members of our community.
In order to support the next generation of cutting-edge scientific research through a revitalized Institute for Basic Research, Governor Hochul and the staff at the Office for People With Developmental Disabilities have made this important investment in our Staten Island community, and for that I am grateful. Assemblymember Michael Reilly (R-South Shore) stated, “I also commend the conversion of the historic Willowbrook site into a Center for Learning, a significant step that ensures this property is used to support those in need for generations to come.”
A new idea in Gov. Kathy Hochul’s state budget proposal would turn the former Willowbrook State School’s Building 29 into a Center for Learning. (Erik Bascome/Staten Island Advance)Erik Bascome/Staten Island Advance
About the Willowbrook State School
During the 20th century, Willowbrook State School became a nationwide icon of the inhumane treatment of adults and children with developmental disabilities.
The most vulnerable citizens of the borough were mistreated, malnourished, and neglected at the institution, which started sheltering the developmentally impaired population in the late 1940s.
These atrocities were chronicled by Staten Island Advance reporter Jane Kurtin and photographer Eric Aerts, and as a result, the treatment of people with developmental disabilities in the United States has undergone significant changes over time.
Willowbrook State School’s scandal and disgrace sparked a global shift in how societies treat people with disabilities and mental illnesses. (Photo from an advanced file)
Kurtin, a young reporter, requested to tour Willowbook State School for the Advance in 1971 when he was just 21 years old. Nevertheless, she could never have prepared herself for what she saw when she entered the notorious facility.
She wrote of youngsters being placed in isolation akin to that of a prison. She wrote about people sharing a room where they ate, slept, peed, and defecated. She described how teenagers were placed in seclusion cells that were roughly 8 by 10 feet and had a tiny, mesh-covered window. She described residents who were always kept nude.
What was discovered was cruel: As part of a medical research, certain adults and children who were institutionalized at Willowbrook were purposefully given injections of the hepatitis-causing virus. Some were made to consume the excrement of other inhabitants who had contracted the illness.
The national media took notice of Kurtin’s Advance Expos. An ambitious but little-known Geraldo Rivera launched his career in television journalism by bringing Kurtin’s series to the attention of the country after the Advance published it. Kurtin claimed that Rivera’s involvement consistently confirmed the significance of her work, despite the fact that many have claimed she was denied credit for revealing the atrocities at Willowbrook State School.
An image from the collection of Willowbrook State School photos by Eric Aerts at the College of Staten Island. (Image courtesy of the College of Staten Island Archives & Special Collections and Ericson Aerts.)
Prompting national reform
The New York Civil Liberties Union filed a class-action lawsuit on behalf of Willowbrook State School’s 5,300 inhabitants against the state and then-Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller shortly after the world learned of the atrocities that took place inside the school.
The Willowbrook Consent Decree, a federal court agreement that resulted, set the stage for nationwide reform in the housing, education, and care of individuals with developmental disabilities.
The remaining students were moved to more humane settings, such group homes, when a federal judge in 1975 ordered the school’s population to be lowered to 250. Willowbrook, which was once known as the Staten Island Developmental Center, eventually shut down in 1987. In 1989, the City University of New York purchased a portion of the land and renovated the numerous brick structures to use as the College of Staten Island (CSI) campus.
An image from the collection of Willowbrook State School photos by Eric Aerts at the College of Staten Island. (Image courtesy of the College of Staten Island Archives & Special Collections and Ericson Aerts.)
Willowbrook Mile
More than a decade ago, CSI, along with the Staten Island Developmental Disabilities Council, OPWDD and the Institute for Basic Research, began a project to establish a memorial walking trail: The Willowbrook Mile.
The Willowbrook Mile wasofficially opened in September 2022, just days after the 35th anniversary of the infamous institution s closure.
Each of the path s 12 milestones marks a different building of the former school, and offers details about the site s history. At the sixth milestone, which details her and Rivera s work exposing the school, is a bench donated by the Advance dedicated to Kurtin.
Her passion to right wrong woke a nation to the horrors of Willowbrook, a plaque on the bench reads.
Hundreds gather at the College of Staten Island for the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the walking trail known as “Willowbrook Mile” conisting of 12 stations marking the history of the site on the 35th annivarsary of the closing of Willowbrook. Saturday, Sept. 17, 2022. (Staten Island Advance/Jason Paderon) Jason PaderonJason Paderon
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