One of Zelda’s Sanatoriums Still Stands

One of the sanatoriums where  Zelda Fitzgerald was treated still stands in Maryland, though it is empty of patients and somewhat decrepit.

An editor for The History Channel, Luke J. Spenser, wrote about what’s left of the building for the website Atlas Obscura.

His hobby is documenting abandoned buildings, and he took these photos of the building, not far from The Hudson River, in Beacon, New York. Surprisingly there are still some furnishings inside. He writes:

“…it was a place of great sadness and despair. Frances Seymour, wife to Henry Fonda and mother to Jane Fonda, committed suicide here, cutting her throat with a razor in one of the turrets in 1942. Rosemary Kennedy was sent here after her controversial lobotomy when she was just 23 left her with the mental age of a two year old.”

Read the article in Atlas Obscura HERE.

(All photos posted with permission from Luke J. Spencer)

Zelda died in a fire in another mental hospital, in North Carolina, on March 10, 1948. F. Scott Fitzgerald had died in 1940. They’re buried in Rockville, Maryland.

There is a Fitzgerald museum in Montgomery in the house where the couple lived. From the museum website:

“The Fitzgerald Museum is the only dedicated museum to F. Scott & Zelda Fitzgerald in the world. It is the last of four extant homes that are peppered across the world. The gypsy lifestyle of the couple placed them in a number of locations including New York, Paris, Italy, Minnesota and Montgomery, Alabama.”