MONSON – Rumbling along a cracked street through the Monson Developmental Center, the buildings around us look stately and collegiate, if a bit institutional, with their slate roofs and colonial-style facades. They carry names like “Broadkill” and “Longview.”
But the campus bears the scars of more than 15 years of abandonment. Waterlogged roofs sag. Rotting porches collapse. Cockeyed basketball hoops rust. Interiors sit entombed behind boarded-up windows.
On a hillside, heavy equipment operators are completing a state-sponsored demolition of the center’s old youth camp…