Pilgrim Psychiatric Center was the third of the farm colony asylums built on Long Island. Patients were cared for in a semi-rural environment where they worked either in farming or in any of the hospital's other self-run industries. This was considered therapeutic. Pilgrim opened in 1929 and functioned as a farm colony asylum until a change of public opinion and laws stopped the use of patient labor. The other mental asylums were consolidated into Pilgrim in the late 1990's and Pilgrim is the only one still in operation today even if only a shadow of its former self.