Greystone Park
Parsippany, Parsippany-Troy Hills Township, Morris, NJ
300 acres

Directions:

US 80 west to exit 43 for US 287 south; take the exit for US 10 west; drive about 4 miles to a jug handle on the right; make the left turn onto US 10 east; drive 0.5 of a mile and turn right onto Miller Road; turning/bearing right onto Old Dover Road;  drive about two miles to the main campus of the Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital.  (No sign of a park; 11/13/04.)  Web sources say the land will be southwest of Old Dover Road and Koch Avenue.

History:

1811  -- the Hon. George Vail sells his property to the State.

1870  --  Jesse Pierson purchased and then converted the David Trowbridge house into a wagon shed.

1871  -- George Vail sells more property to the State.

 1871  --  Jesse Pierson sold the former David Trowbridge property to the state of New Jersey and it was incorporated into the Greystone Park Lunatic Asylum (later Greystone State Mental Hospital).   

1872  -- heirs of Josiah H. Gregory sell their lands to the State.

1880  --  Jesse Pierson sells his property to the State.  Alfred and Edward Lister also sold their lands to the State.

(Source: David Trowbridge: http://www.geocities.com/the_trowbridges/davidtrowbridge1.html)

1999  --  Gov. Christie Whitman ordered Greystone to eventually be shut down and a new state-of-the-art hospital built to be opened by 2003.  The state Department of Human Services had plans to create a new hospital on about 200 acres on the northern portion of the campus.

For $1, Morris Co. has purchased from the State 300 acres of the Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital campus in Parsippany.

2002 --  legislation prohibited a sale to developers and required transfer to the County.

Preservation NJ recently included Greystone on its 'Ten Most Endangered' list. The County declined 166 other acres with buildings to be demolished, but Assemblymen Joseph Pennacchio (R-Montville) and Alex DeCroce (R-Parsippany), sponsors of the 2002 law, secured those acres for preservation. The County needs $10 million for building cleanups.

(Source: The Highlands Coalition’s quarterly newsletter "High Grounds" Fall 2003 published by the Association of New Jersey Environmental Commissions (ANJEC); http://www.highlandscoalition.org/highground.htm)

Facilities:

The lease allows baseball, soccer, hockey, cricket; parking, restrooms and picnic pavilions.

Trails:

The land was a sloping expanse that used to be farmland for Greystone patients.

11/13/04.  My wife and I drove back and forth around Greystone but did not see any signs of progress on creating a park.  We did see some large fields sloping downhill to woods.