Northern Michigan Asylum
Also known as: Traverse City State Hospital Historic DistrictBounded by C & O RR tracks, Division and 11th Sts., Elmwood Ave., Orange and Red Drs., Traverse City, Michigan
Map
Coordinates:
+44.75520, -85.6422244°45'19" N, 85°38'32" W
Description
A Michigan Historical Marker here reads: Traverse City Regional Psychiatric Hospital
The northern Michigan Asylum (now the Traverse City Regional Psychiatric Hospital) was organized in 1881. It opened on November 30, 1885, with forty three residents. Dr. J. D. Munson was the facility's superintendent for its first thirty-nine years. The original buildings served five hundred residents. By 1959 the facility had 1.4 million square feet of floor space and housed 2,956 residents. The institution's farms and its processing and manufacturing facilities covered over a thousand acres and made it nearly self-sufficient. Between 1885 and 1985 it served over fifty thousand residents. After 1960, with advances in treatment and community services, the need for in-patient facilities declined. In 1985 one hundred and fifty beds served the area's acute and intensive psychiatric needs.
National Register information
Note: The following information comes from the NRHP database and has not been verified.
- Status
- Posted to the National Register of Historic Places on October 3, 1978
- Reference number
- 78001499
- Architectural style
- Victorian: Italianate
- Areas of significance
- Landscape Architecture; Health/Medicine; Education; Architecture; Social History
- Level of significance
- State
- Evaluation criteria
- A - Event; C - Design/Construction
- Property type
- District
- Historic function
- Hospital
- Current function
- Hospital
- Period of significance
- 1875-1899
- Significant year
- 1885
- Number of properties
- Contributing buildings: 15
Non-contributing buildings: 10