Public Project
Bellevue Homeless Shelter
The 30th Street Men´s Shelter, otherwise known as Bellevue, is New York City's largest homeless shelter. Built in 1931, the shelter is located on the East Side of Manhattan in the former Bellevue Psychiatric Hospital. Its a nine-story red-brick building enclosed by a tall spiked wrought-iron fence with dead vines growing up the walls. The shelter has many surviving traces from when it was a psychiatric hospital, complete with institutional yellow and gray paint and square windows set in most of the doors.
In early 2010, after being denied official access, I checked myself into Bellevue to document life on the inside.
watch the multimedia story on Vimeo
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