The Northern Michigan Asylum and Beauty as Therapy
Near Traverse City, Michigan
On a hill just west of downtown stands a vast Victorian building crowned with red spires, and for more than a century it was one of the most humane experiments in American psychiatry. It opened in eighteen eighty-five as the Northern Michigan Asylum, later called Traverse City State Hospital, built as demand grew for a third state hospital beyond the older asylums downstate at Kalamazoo and Pontiac. The central structure, known as Building Fifty, followed the Kirkbride Plan, a design philosophy that put every patient near a window with light, fresh air, and a view.
The first superintendent, Doctor James Decker Munson, believed in a simple idea he summed up in three words: beauty is therapy. If patients were surrounded by grace, by fine architecture, flowering grounds, sunlight, and even fresh flowers on the dining tables, Munson thought their minds would heal. Straitjackets and physical restraints were forbidden, and useful work in the fields and workshops was considered part of the cure.
That gentle era did not last forever. In later decades the gentle approach faded, and the hospital finally closed its doors in nineteen eighty-nine.
