molly tompkins

Beauty in Restoration: Traverse City State Hospital

“The motto of the Traverse City State Hospital was ‘Beauty is Therapy,’” our quirky, old, tour guide told us matter-of-factly. I was with my family on a historical tour of the former Traverse City State Hospital, one of Michigan’s few psychiatric hospitals that opened in 1885 and served patients for over 100 years until 1989. Now, the site, in the midst of a huge restoration and repurposing project, boasts coveted real estate for fancy restaurants, boutique shops, senior living facilities and condominiums. It was the day after Thanksgiving and my sister and I were both home from college and our younger brother had the day off from high school. My mom (who is often bored at home and looking for activities to do) was excited because she had wanted to do the tour for years and had never gotten around to it. My dad—more reluctant—agreed to go on our behalf.

Our family’s previous exposure to this site, the Traverse City State Hospital, had been through frequent trips to our favorite Italian restaurant, Stella, which is located in the basement of one of the main restored buildings, and another one we loved, Spanglish, which is in a satellite building. With only a minimal understanding of the history behind the many buildings that make up the State Hospital campus, we were excited to embark on the tour to learn more about the real story behind the site of simply a great restaurant, some running trails and places to take homecoming and prom pictures we had experienced before.

Given the place’s past purpose as one of the state of Michigan’s public mental hospitals, it did not surprise me that there were always eerie feelings associated with the buildings. They were believed to be haunted and were the site of countless acts of vandalism over the years. I remember my grandfather, an oral surgeon who moved and started a family in Traverse City in the late 1950s, telling us stories about working at the State Hospital. He used to pull teeth there. He would tell us how appalled he was that the patients really could not get out, and that they were miserable inside. I wondered if this really was a place of therapy, or if the beauty was more of a disguise.

My grandfather’s perspective had always given me a feeling of apprehension towards the place, although he was not apprehensive about the repurposing himself. Like us, he would enjoy the farm to table dishes at Stella, paying no mind to the brick hallways of the restaurant that created a dark but pleasant dinnertime ambiance now, but carried suffering patients on hospital beds then.

***

“You are standing in the middle of the largest historical private repurposing project in the Western Hemisphere,” our tour guide, Joe, told us. Joe was an average looking tall guy with a ratty windbreaker on, gripping an old printed coffee mug with his giant knit mittens. Seemingly disheveled, he did not look ready to embark on this “outside” tour.

We were one of three typical-looking nuclear families on the tour along with one older couple. Since Traverse City is such a small town and my extended family is huge, we pretty much know everyone. It was clear from their unfamiliarity and tourist-esque outfits (“Up North” sweatshirts and over-the-top snow boots for November) that our fellow tour-goers were not local. I wondered if the other families from out of town had been to the State Hospital before or what they had heard about it. I imagined my family’s background and preconceived notions were much different than theirs. For us, taking a formal tour of a familiar place—in some ways, but not others—would be an interesting experience.

It was no more than twenty degrees outside and we stood inside for the beginning of the tour in our long parkas, hats and gloves because we had been told to dress to walk in the cold weather. We checked in for the tour at the main building, called Kirkbride Hall, which I later learned is one of many buildings constructed with a specific special design for mental asylums named after a psychiatrist credited with reforming mental health treatment through architecture. The building we were in for the start of the tour looked like an ordinary building under construction, with dust and scaffolding everywhere. There were historical photographs hung in cheap frames all over the walls and nearby was the entrance to the hallway where the shops and restaurants I had been to so many times were located.

My mom checked in with the non-smiling tour guide and got our lanyards that were labeled “HISTORICAL TOUR” in big block letters on neon tags. Not the kind you want to keep. We struggled to fit them around our scarves and hoods.

Joe opened the tour with background information about the building we were standing in, the Traverse City State Hospital, formerly known as the Northern Michigan Asylum, telling us the hospital operated for 104 years and ultimately closed in 1989. I thought about my mom, who grew up in Traverse City and lived there for two decades while the State Hospital was open and serving patients, her father often working there. 1989 was the year my parents got married in Traverse City. I wondered if remembered that day? Did it cause uproar in the community?

“When the State Hospital closed, the homeless population in Traverse City exploded. Hundreds of people were left to fend for themselves on the street,” Joe told us, “There were patients coming back continuously knocking on the door and begging to be let back inside—this was the only place they knew. This was their home.”

Joe spent a few minutes individually describing the hanging pictures to us. One was of patients sitting in the beautiful open dining room eating dinner. “The dining room is behind me,” he pointed to large glass doors that opened to a room that looked like a banquet hall. It was dark and gray dirt caked the walls. There were ladders and equipment but it seemed that construction workers had not been there in a while.

“The original marble floors are still here. The meals were always very nice—as you can probably tell from looking at this room,” Joe said. We got closer and peeked inside. The room had almost two story high ceilings and beautiful Victorian windows. I would not have noticed the floor had Joe not pointed it out, but beneath the dust I could see the faded intricate design in the marble.

“Even something as mundane as the dining hall floor was special,” he said. I thought back to my conversations with my grandfather, who had said that the windows were boarded up and it was obvious that the patients could not even leave for a walk. From his perspective, the place was nothing special.

***

The Traverse City State Hospital was built when demand rose for a third psychiatric hospital in Michigan. Perry Hannah, who was dubbed “The Father of Traverse City,” used his “convenient influence,” as Joe put it, to build the hospital in Traverse City. Building 50, the main hospital building that we went to for the beginning of the tour, was built first following the Kirkbride Plan.

The multi-year and multi-million restoration project underway at the Traverse City State Hospital names it the Village at Grand Traverse Commons and calls itself “a beautiful solution to urban sprawl.” The Minervini Group, led by Traverse City’s Ray Minervini, is leading the large resurrection project with goals to renovate and repurpose the entire property, which consists of dozens of buildings, in the near future. Our tour guide, on the other hand, called the restorers “a group of investors from Detroit.” My parents knew the Minervinis and from what we understood, they were local, so I was unsure what he meant.

The Minervini Group has already invested over $60 million in the restoration project of around 27 buildings in total, and they are nowhere near finished. The Minervinis, who began restoration in 2000, have goals to renovate the entire complex, and estimate it could take over 10 years and $300 million to completely finish, but they are determined: “It’s a humbling experience to work with old buildings; we are their temporary custodians. Here we have an opportunity to do well by doing good. It isn’t just about the bottom line; it’s about the end of the line,” Ray Minervini said.

As we walked around the main hall of the Kirkbride building, we learned the layout was deliberate and important; central administration for the hospital was located in the center, where we stood, for patient check-in and any issues. Male patients lived in the left wing, while females lived in the right. Dr. Kirkbride believed it was important that women and men were separated in their treatment.

“The patients here had a wide range of mental health issues,” Joe informed us, “My ex-wife probably would have sent me here for years,” he said brashly, looking for a laugh he did not get.

“Come ON guys, you’re supposed to laugh.” My brother and I just looked at each other and raised our eyebrows. The guy was trying too hard and it was not working.

“On a serious note,” he said, “Mental health issues were viewed very differently back then. Patients here were promiscuous women. They were women going through menopause. They had post-partum depression. Some of them had severe mental illnesses, and some just got sent by their husbands.”

I was surprised that these conditions could cause one to be institutionalized and also a little confused at how the place was currently being portrayed—as almost a place of luxurious living when I could not help but continue thinking that these people were locked inside. At peak occupancy, the hospital hosted over 700 patients at a given time.

It was hard to imagine that in such a small town, there was an entire secluded community hidden in these beautiful buildings. My mom mentioned that when she was growing up, the State Hospital was not somewhere she and her siblings or friends would go. The trails, outside grounds and buildings were for patients only and it stayed that way until restoration began in the 2000s. Now open to the public, the grounds where patients used to work outside if allowed, bring hundreds of community members and tourists to enjoy.

***

The tour moved outside to explore the grounds and the other buildings from an outdoor view. It was late in the afternoon. A sliver of sunlight shined directly on the beautiful yellow brick buildings. The sky was a soft dark blue and contrasted well with the red painted turrets next to the faded yellow brick. I had never noticed it before, but I could now tell, based on coloring and architecture the buildings, the difference between the buildings that belonged to the original State Hospital campus and which had been added later.

The yellow-toned brick, called Markham Brick, is named after the Markham brothers of Greilickville, a small town near Traverse City. The millions of brick that make up the State Hospital buildings are various shades of pale yellow.

“There are 10-15 million of these bricks that were hand-laid in Building 50 alone,” Joe told us, “The Markham brothers used to bring the brick to this site via rail. They conveniently dropped enough along the way to build their own houses out of it nearby.” We laughed. I remembered seeing two houses in downtown Traverse City that were made out of that same distinctive yellow brick—now I knew where it came from.

Standing outside, we were essentially in the center of the grounds and could see the repurposed buildings home to the restaurants and shops we knew well, the condos and the abandoned buildings.

“That’s where people go to smoke and drink, Molly,” my little brother whispered to me almost mischievously as if I had no idea such things existed, pointing to one of the abandoned hospital buildings.

“I know. Nothing has changed,” I replied, remembering the most popular partying place when I was high school was the same. I looked at one of the buildings where I had taken my prom pictures up against the walls outside, peeking through the windows, in front of the pretty doors and on the steps. There was something about these yellow buildings, and I did not think it was the history, that drew teenagers there to party and take pictures.

***

Joe walked us towards one of the larger abandoned Victorian-Italianate yellow brick buildings. It was haphazardly boarded up with nails and plywood, probably in efforts to prevent what my brother and I had just discussed. Most of the windows were shattered. We entered through a boarded up door that was padlocked shut. Joe turned the key, warning us to stick with him closely because there were some bad columns and dangerous places in the building. He opened the door and led us into the hall. The doors had rounded corners to prevent patients from getting hurt. Completely torn up on the inside, the building had drywall chips everywhere and strewn piles of dust and construction material. There was broken glass across the floor and many of the walls were spray painted with vulgar sayings.

“We have to try to keep the teenagers out of here. The vandalism is getting out of hand,” Joe told us, shaking his head. My brother, Teague, turned and nudged me, as if he had the inside scoop. I was probably one of only a few people in my larger friend group in high school who had not broken into the buildings, so this was my first time seeing one of the abandoned ones.

“Do you see that?” Joe almost yelled at our group, pointing to a railing that had been ripped out of the floor.

“They’ve just been tearing it up. I don’t understand the appeal. They don’t even know what this used to be, do they?” he looked at my siblings and I, the only young people on the tour, for an answer.

We moved on from the large main room that was used as a gathering place for eating and group events. Joe led our group into a smaller hallway with doors to small rooms on each side. The rooms all had big Victorian-style windows. Joe told us these were patient rooms, and that the goal of the hospital was to have as much natural light for the patients as possible. I learned that the rooms were approximately ten by ten feet, with thirteen foot ceilings and over eight foot tall windows that looked out towards the farm land on the grounds where the patients worked.

***

“Beauty is therapy,” he reminded us, “but there are metal bars behind these wooden panels that you can only see from the outside.” I had mixed feelings about this. My grandfather had seen patients in these rooms. He knew there were bars. It almost seemed like the patients were being deceived. Despite the efforts to make the experience luxurious, there was no denying that they were completely trapped. It was obvious just from what was left of the intricate architecture that it used to be a beautiful building. The air vents were covered with teal iron covers that were shaped in swirling patterns.

Green spray painted graffiti covered one of the walls of the wards and read “STOP bein’ bitches and keep the doors OPEN!” I wondered if I, or probably more likely my brother, had actually known the kids who spray-painted this. There were old to-go coffee cups on almost shattered windowsills of the building as if people had just been there. It was eerily quaint. As he led us closer to one of the windows, Joe continued cracking bad jokes about himself, his Thanksgiving and his apparently oddly pleasant relationship with his ex-wife.

***

We walked through the rest of the abandoned building, where intricate wrought iron railings lay stripped out and on the ground. Across the grounds, we passed the entrance to the hiking trails on the grounds. The beginning of the trail was covered with fallen leaves and there were only a few cars in the parking lot, but I recognized it as the entrance to the trail that had the huge water tower where I went for the first time with my high school boyfriend. He showed me the heavily graffitied water tower and we walked around it holding hands. We had one of our first kisses in those woods on a beautiful fall day and I felt rebellious being back there alone with him exploring the grounds. We used to go to a huge old fallen tree about a half-mile from the trail entrance called the Hippy Tree, that was rumored to be haunted and was, as we had heard, a portal to Hell if you walked around it the right way. It seemed funny to me now, but at the time the Hippy Tree was a big deal to us, almost like a secret the Traverse City Central High School kids kept. That was a memory I would never forget.

I had always heard the State Hospital was haunted. For the last part of the tour, to our reluctance but excitement, we entered the underground tunnels. These tunnels transported patients and medical supplies, food and other items throughout the grounds of the State Hospital during its operation. The fact that there were tunnels alone almost made me uncomfortable. It really gave the sense that the patients were trapped since they were led through an enclosed area to get anywhere they needed to go.

The tunnels connected every building on the State Hospital campus during its operation. There were two types of tunnels, one for people—both patients and staff members, and one for materials—pipes for heat, hot water, airshafts and electricity. Some of the tunnels have been restored and are used for data cables and fire suppression pipes currently, and the Minervinis have plans to eventually use them to possibly age cheese and champagne (UpNorthLive). The tunnel we went in was dark and lined with dripping moist brick. Shaped like an upside down U, which we learned was similar to Roman style; the tunnel had a big archway and slightly round bottom. There was a thin layer of water turning to ice on the ground. About five of us could fit abreast with a decent amount of room inside the tunnel. I tried to imagine using these tunnels to navigate from building to building in the winter as the patients did with their caregivers.

It was freezing outside and I was happy to have shelter. Even for a few minutes. In the tunnels, I was again perplexed. On one hand, these tunnels might have been nice to travel through in the winter, avoiding the frigidity of the Northern Michigan winter. On the other, I questioned what these really did for the freedom and independence of the patients. I was not sure how I felt about the efforts to restore these tunnels to be something as simple as wine cellars—when they had been the place of suffering. Or at least I speculated.

***

As I traversed the grounds with my family, I thought about how they really stood for community and recreation. If not for the restoration project, would the geography be protected the way it was? Was it okay for us to forget the bad things that happened there and focus on the beauty of the surroundings and the buildings?

My grandfather’s memories of helping desperate, trapped patients constructed his views of the place, but he was open to them changing. My mom’s perspective was different, having grown up hearing about the State Hospital from her father but never experiencing it firsthand until she was an adult bringing her family to the shops and restaurants that dotted the campus. My own was dominated by the product of the restoration project, of experiences and places that really had nothing to do with what the place used to be. Or, I wondered, did they? If the mission, as I now knew, of the Traverse City State Hospital was positive, did that mean we should celebrate it positively?