Piney Boy:
You are referring to the Camden County institutional facility at Lakeland in Gloucester Township. The governmental complex here dates to December 1800, when Old Gloucester County purchased land along Timber Creek for establishing an almshouse, although they failed to construct the first building until 1816. The county added buildings, such as a small building for the insane, to the property as needed. In 1844, the state legislature approved the erection of Camden County out of Gloucester County. The two counties operated the Timber Creek complex jointly until 1861, when New Jersey lawmakers approved the sale of the facility to Camden County, along with the woodland in Williamstown. The legislature adjusted the county boundary accordingly in this act as the Timber Creek had served as the line between the counties and Lakeland transcended that line. Camden County added new buildings and a poor farm to its county facilities at Lakeland during the late nineteenth century and into the twentieth century. The razed building you refer to was the former county mental hospital, first built in 1878, but enlarged in 1881, 1898, 1925, 1933, and 1936. It fell out of use as an insane asylum and became a training facility for the police before being abandoned entirely.
Jerseyman