What’s Going on With Fairfield Hills?

Every time I drive by Fairfield Hills in Newtown, I get a little sad. I'll explain.

On the Fairfield Hills campus was a hospital, housing for staff, their own sewage plant, their own power plant, its own telephone exchange, in addition to many other things that actually allowed the campus to function on its own. It was almost its own town.

Having grown up in Newtown, I never really thought twice about having a hospital for the mentally ill in the same town, it had always been there (since the 1930s). In fact, I was one of the St. Rose kids and we didn't have a gym at the school (at that time), so the basketball teams practiced at a gym on the Fairfield Hills campus.

In 1995 the hospital was closed and the buildings were abandoned. Since then some buildings have been torn down, one came down recently. One of the buildings was renovated to move the Town Hall there and a Youth Center was built in the same design as the buildings.

There are some baseball fields and hiking trails there too. You can either walk on the paved path around the main part of the campus or in the woods by the old power plant. So there is still lots of activity on the campus.

What makes me sad is what is happening to those buildings. I know there is asbestos in them and I know that it would take lots of money to get rid of it and renovate the buildings, but it is so sad to see them sitting there just rotting away.

I love walking around the campus and I feel like the buildings have so much potential, but I have no clue how much it would cost to renovate them so businesses could move in. You don't see detail in buildings like this a lot anymore.

It really is a nice campus with some nice buildings. I just hope that there are plans to save more of the buildings and put them to use. To see them all be torn down would be very sad.

Fairfield Hills has been used for a few different shows and movies. The movie Sleepers used Fairfield Hills for a boys reformatory. Great movie, but you might need a drink after watching it. I forgot how many famous faces were in the movie, including a very young Brad Pitt!

A friend and I waited in line to be extras for the movie, even though it was for a boys reformatory...yeah, we didn't get called. I still remember some guys in my classes being excused to go film a scene for the movie.

Here's a trailer for the movie. The parts in the trailer where they are walking through the tunnels are from Fairfield Hills. Those tunnels have since been filled in or boarded up, much to the dismay of many ghost hunters.

Here are some links for more info: FairfieldHills.org, Newtown Bee, Wikipedia

Listen to Liz Kaye weekdays from 10-2 on 105.5 FM. You can listen online by clicking here or by downloading the radioPup app for your mobile device.