Running From Raccoons in Staten Island

That is the last time I will ever go back in that particular abandoned building.

Illustration by Sophie Goldstein

No one saw me poking around the old Fort Totten Post Hospital, except for a suspicious raccoon that seemed to be the unofficial watchman of the place. I ignored him and stepped through an open door at the back of the building. That’s when he must have followed me inside.

I hadn’t bothered to look over my shoulder as I made my way past ancient kitchen cabinets piled high with dust. I sidled through a two-story cave-in—a dimly lit hallway that visibly slumped a foot or two lower than any floor should. With as light a step as my husky frame allowed, I headed down a spongy staircase to the basement to check in on my favorite sight in the hospital—a mind-bending spot where you can look straight up through three stories of collapsed rooms to the dormer windows in the attic.

As a photographer who’d spent the last year-and-a-half shooting New York City’s decaying factories, institutions, schools and cemeteries, Fort Totten, a former U.S. Army installation in Quee…