To relieve New York City's growing mentally ill population, Kings County (now Brooklyn) set forth to build an institution where patients could be treated far away from the hectic city life. The Kings Park Lunatic Asylum was established in 1885 as an extension of the Brooklyn County Hospital complex located on Clarkson Ave. The location for the new asylum would be far away in rural Suffolk County, and it initially consisted of a few wooden buildings where residents could be rehabilitated. As need for mentally ill facilities grew, the county "Lunatic Farm" (as it was called) was handed over to New York State in 1895 where it became Long Island State Hospital. Hearkening to its roots in Brooklyn, the institution was re-named Kings Park State Hospital in 1916 - and as the hospital grew in this once desolate woodland, it essentially created the town of Kings Park that we know today.