CENTRAL ISLIP, N.Y. (CBSNewYork) ... The answer is they were part of a sprawling state hospital that opened in 1889, and there are finally big plans for the site, ...

A worker uses a weed hacker to clear the grounds at the Central Islip State Hospital Cemetery, the once-forgotten burial ground that served the shuttered Central Islip Psychiatric Center.

The Central Islip Psychiatric facility, which once housed up to 12,000 patients, closed its doors in 1996, its last patients transferred to Pilgrim Psychiatric Center in Brentwood.

Further research revealed that his relative, Napoleon Hedemark, had been committed to the Central Islip Psychiatric Center sometime before 1900. He died there on Nov. 21, 1916, at the age of 72.

Formerly occupied by the state’s Central Islip Psychiatric Center, NYIT bought more than 500 acres of the 750-acre hospital site in 1984 to establish a Suffolk County campus.