The Bloomingdale Asylum, located in the Morningside Heights neighborhood in Manhattan (and later relocated to White Plains under another name), functioned as a private hospital for mentally ill patients from 1821-1889. The asylum was the subject of an 1872 exposé by reporter Julius Chambers in The New York Tribune in which the author conducted an undercover investigation of “the lunacy law” of New York.

Sources:

“Bloomingdale Asylum Exposé – Julius Chambers – The New York Tribune,” Undercover Reporting, http://dlib.nyu.edu/undercover/bloomingdale-asylum-expos%C3%A9-julius-c…