northville psychiatric hospital (Michigan)

This footage was taken back in 2021 on a solo Explorer. Soon these walls will be gone and the stories will be forgotten.
Join me as I show you a few of the buildings that still stand.
I do realize I did not say psychiatric in beginning of the video. Lol

Northville State Hospital, or NSH, started in the mid 1940’s, and opened in 1952.

Consisting of 20 buildings spread out over 453 of wooded, sometimes swampy land, NSH was lauded as one of the best psychiatric facilities in the country when it opened. Patients suffering from varying degrees of psychological problems were treated in different wards and buildings around the campus, arranged around a gleaming eight-story tower on the north side. The hospital was almost completely self-sufficient with its own laundry, kitchen, gymnasium, movie theater, swimming pool, and bowling alley, powered by a steam plant which supplied electricity and heat through a network of underground tunnels.

In its early days, Northville was a pioneer in the use of art and music as part of treatment. Patients could learn to play musical instruments, put on plays, could study mechanics or home economics, worked in hospital facilities, and tended the grounds. In the 1970’s, though, the state began to trim the mental health budget, closing some hospitals and reducing programs offered as doctors began relying on medicine and drugs to treat symptoms. Crowding became an issue at Northville, as the facility was regularly treating over 1,000 patients, but had only been designed for 650. Some patients had to sleep in the gymnasium until more rooms could be arranged.

Budget and staffing cuts began to take their toll on the hospital in the 1980’s. A series of investigative reports by the Detroit News in 1983 found conditions at the hospital were “appalling.” Reporters found patients sleeping in the hallways of wards, chain-smoking cigarettes, or watching television. They were receiving little in the way of therapeutic treatment, with doctors instead relying on large doses of psychiatric drugs. Assault, theft, racism, neglect, and rape were common; patients sometimes died during struggles with the hospital staff, or at the hands of fellow patients. Compounding problems was that many of the doctors were foreign-born, resulting in a cultural gap, which made it difficult for them to communicate with patients and vice-versa.

The 1990’s continued the trend of hospital downsizing and closing, as the state sought to move patients from expensive hospitals into community-based support systems and halfway houses. The hospital changed its name in 1995 to Northville Regional Psychiatric Hospital, reflecting its increased role as nearby hospitals were shuttered. By the late 90’s, Northville was one of the last remaining state mental hospitals in Michigan. Once called the “Palace of Glass” for its modern construction, the campus was run-down and deteriorating.

In 2002 the state announced that it was going to close Northville within a year. The hospital was simply too expensive to keep running for the few hundred patients still living there, needed major repairs, and most importantly – was sitting on a very valuable, undeveloped piece of land as the property market was skyrocketing. The last days at Northville were marked by uncertainty: many patients didn’t know where they would be going until a few weeks or days before the closing. Most were either transferred to nearby facilities, while some were shipped across the state. The last patient left on May 16th, 2003, after which a skeleton staff began winding down operations.

In 2017 Northville Township began demolishing the 8-story tower.
In 2022 the rest of the buildings are being demolished.
The above information was provided by Detroiturbex.com