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 Ypsilanti
State Hospital was practically a small city at its peak in the mid-1950s, with a
staff of nearly 1,000, 4,000 mentally ill patients, its own chapel, even a
nine-hole golf course.
Today the site sits abandoned, its buildings largely gutted in preparation
for their final demolition. Urban explorers and curious passerby who ignore the
"No Trespassing" signs and venture through the open doorways will certainly find
peeling paint and leaking roofs, birds flying about indoors and rooms of
abandoned filing cabinets and kitchen equipment. They might not, however, have a
sense for the scale of the human suffering that existed within its walls.
Soon the site of the old hospital will return to economic productivity, and
few of the employees at the new Toyota research facility are likely to give much
thought to the land's past life. The patients abandoned by their families and
society, the numerous suicides within the hospital, the ward attendant who was
working an extra shift in 1987 to save up for retirement when a patient murdered
him - these all have little impact on the daily grind of designing sleeker and
more fuel-efficient vehicles. The last tangible link to Ypsilanti State Hospital
and its patients will come down with these buildings, and what memories are left
of life there will fade away.
Source:
The Michigan Daily
The Michigan Daily - Opening its doors again
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