Asylum

INTRO:
I like to adventure and explore abandoned buildings, taking photos in and around them. I saw pictures of the “large abandoned insane asylum” in northern Michigan and immediately wanted to be one of the photographers that went there. My wife and I packed up the gear and headed north. I was hoping to get inside and snap away. The whole way up there, we wondered how it would look and how it would feel to be there.
HISTORY:
The Northern Michigan Asylum (now the Traverse City State 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 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.
MYTH:
I have read that the area is haunted and that if you wore anything that had a religious meaning, it was either damaged or would mysteriously get lost when you entered the premises.
CONCLUSION:
We didn’t get a chance to go inside any of the buildings but to just be there and look up at them, was amazing. The complex is huge and it even had its own fire department, bakery, textile and upholstery facility. There definitely was a “feeling” there that was hard to explain. We were really excited to walk around the complex and your mind races with thoughts of how it must have been years ago. When you looked at the buildings with the safety bars bolted from the outside, your mind wonders of how many faces were pressed up against the metal bars and the loud moans and screams that echoed through the trees on the large lawns. Well at least my mind wondered.
There is a large renovation project going on and some of the buildings are actually remodeled and made into condos. Inside one of the buildings is a restaurant that was quite busy….yes I said condos! Again these buildings are very large and beautiful.
I keep the photos in a traditional black and white except for the renovated parts. By the way, we didn’t wear any religious symbols so I couldn’t tell you………….. I will return……….