Students Will Soon Call $20 Million Dorm Home

A year from now students enrolled at Green Chimneys will be calling a $20 million dormitory home.

Despite the winter weather construction has begun on the 88-bed building that Green Chimney’s President Joseph Whalen said “earmarks a 12-year $40 million investment in infrastructure that includes a new school, health center and dormitory facility making Green Chimneys one of the premier treatment centers across both New York State as well as America for special needs children.”

Currently many of the living units used to house the boys and girls are found in buildings dotted throughout the Green Chimneys campus at the Southeast-Patterson line. Whalen explained when Green Chimneys was founded 60 years ago, “we were a farm. The buildings have been converted, re-converted and renovated over the years but the time has come for a new facility since the residences have surpassed their useful life.”

The new units will consist of 11 pods each containing eight children. Whalen said each child will have an individual bed and surroundings which will increase supervision: “The facility has been modeled after one of the best psychiatric hospitals in the United States so the school will not only have great supervision but also an extremely therapeutic and warm environment allowing children to gain success as early as possible.”

Green Chimneys also provides a 14 bed step down psychiatric hospital known as David Hall that falls under the purview of the State Office of Mental Health.

One hundred children attend Green Chimneys School Day School program.

Whalen said while many people believe that Green Chimneys educates emotionally and socially challenged children only from the inner-city, “in reality, Green Chimneys services 67 school districts throughout the Hudson Valley and Long Island. The demographics are much different today than they were 15 years ago. Our neighbors both near and far are being serviced very well.”

—Eric Gross