Traverse City State Hospital

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Good morning. Good evening. Good afternoon. Whatever the

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case may be. This is Mike, and this

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is Mike Dells world number

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three no. Is it 434?

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That was a hard number for some reason.

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But, anyway, 434.

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This is, 11/28/2025.

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Yeah. I always had to think about that

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date.

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This is,

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was it Panic Friday? No. Black Friday.

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Well, yeah, I'm not gonna be out shopping.

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Believe me.

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I got enough other things to do.

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Actually, I've got some website work to do

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for

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a client slash friend of mine.

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Not work related, but

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separate from work. But, today, we're gonna talk

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about the Traverse City State Hospital, otherwise known

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as the Northern Michigan Asylum

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or and the Traverse City Regional Psychiatric Hospital.

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And this

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complex and I and I I won't call

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it a building because it's several buildings. It's

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a huge campus,

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kind of on the West Side of town,

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you know, near our medical hospital

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and a big nursing home. So it's kinda

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that side of town's always been medically

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related.

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The state hospital was established

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in Traverse City in 1881.

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That's a long time ago.

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That was established by

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James Decker Munson, who is also the

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the

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namesake for the, Munson Healthcare

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System, which is our main medical hospital system

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around here,

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and also Perry Hanna. Perry Hanna is well

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known as the

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the,

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father of Traverse City, and he had a

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big store downtown,

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the Hannah Lay

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Mercantile

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store, and, he built a really cool mansion

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who's it's which is owned by a friend

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of mine now. It's a funeral home, but

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a huge,

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you know, mansion, the, Perry Hanna House on

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6th Street, now, the Zhongkoff

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Funeral Home.

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But a beautiful old building.

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When we were kids,

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used to used to stay in that building

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once in a while. They had the living

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quarters upstairs from the funeral home, which is

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on the Main Floor

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and

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used to

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stay over there and explore that house and

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now they give kind of tours of it.

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Nobody lives there anymore, but

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and they're still running the business out of

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there for sure.

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It's like one of the largest funeral home

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in the area.

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So but anyway, then I digress. The State

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Hospital,

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like I said, was established in 1881

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It opened up, in 1885,

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and it was

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a self sustaining,

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community.

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The

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the people that ran that,

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you know, was,

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you know, psychiatric

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care,

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with beauty, you know, involved because the buildings

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are just

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beautiful Victorian

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buildings. The main building, Building 50,

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everybody calls it. And that's still standing and

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it's been

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reused

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for various things, but

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I'll get to that.

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But back in the day, that was, you

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know, one of the big regional

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psychiatric

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hospitals, state hospitals,

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mental hospitals. I don't know. They had a

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whole bunch of

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of, you know, euphemisms

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for it, but it was a place where

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people with psychiatric problems could could go, and

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and they had a pretty good record of

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of healing people,

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you know, at least in the early

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part of it in the in, you know,

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the middle in the sixties,

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fifties, forties,

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whatever.

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My grandparents, both my dad's folks,

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were

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employees out there. My grandmother was an RN,

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registered nurse, and my grandfather was, I guess,

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called an orderly, but,

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you know, he would

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he was in charge of whatever ward he

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was on and, you know, it became like

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a big family in a lot of cases.

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I mean, they did a lot of crazy

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stuff too, like,

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you know, like, mental hospitals do, but

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these were one of the more humane ones.

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And it's an old Kubrick building.

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Kubrick. Am I

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saying that properly?

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But,

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yeah, the whole

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thing,

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was predicated on, you know, kindness, comfort, pleasure

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with beautiful

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flowers provided year round

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by their own greenhouses.

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They had,

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you know, the beautiful wooded grounds. They had

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a farm. You know, there's

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a part of the state hospital complex was,

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what's now called the historic Barnes Park, and

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there's a couple of big old barns there.

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And, one of them, they got all fixed

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up to,

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you know, be like a wedding venue and,

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you know, or a party venue

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and all that. In fact, they went to

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a reception,

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in the barns

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a couple summers ago,

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and it's, it's, you know, really nice, you

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know, in that whole area.

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They had farmers.

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One of our neighbors when he was a

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kid,

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he was a farmer at the state hospital

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and, you know, and he had all the

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the patients and or, you know, my my

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cousin also worked there and he always called

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them clients.

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But, you know, they had a lot of

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the patients,

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you know, helping with the farm. They grew

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their own food. They had, you know, cattle.

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They had

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pigs and chickens and eggs and, you know,

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plus crops and everything. So a lot of

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what the

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state hospital residents

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ate came right off of that property,

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and it was definitely,

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you know,

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pretty self sustaining. They had their own power

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plant.

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That building is still there. All the windows

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are knocked out of it, but the building's

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still there. And they are still renovating some

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of the what they call cottages, but these

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were, like, three story

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barracks buildings, but kind of Victorian style. They're

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really neat. Big porches

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and all that.

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But, they've reused a lot of Building 50.

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The whole bottom floor

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is kind of this winding,

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you know,

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almost like a maze of

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of corridors,

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and they have little stores down there, kinda

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like a mall sort of thing. They have

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a couple restaurants down there. They call it

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the grotto.

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And, you know, a lot of, little small

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shops are set up in there. And, you

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know, it's it's really, you know, it's not

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fixed up to modern specs. It's fixed up,

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to,

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you know, 1900 early nineteen hundred specs, you

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know. Of course, they have lights and everything,

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but

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still it's it's pretty cool.

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The upper Floors of Building 50 have been

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turned into condos and apartments

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and a lot of the outlying areas on

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the on the 1st And 2nd Floor, not

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the Bottom Floor, which was more of a

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basement y type thing,

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are, office space. So a lot of

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people rent, you know, one office or a

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little suite of offices for various business endeavors

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and

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and all that.

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So, you know, it's just a lot of

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stuff going on there, and they've, you know,

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really maintained that building pretty well.

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And some of the cottages as well, they've

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maintained pretty well, and then some of them,

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not so much.

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But they're still standing, they're still solid and

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we'll get to them eventually.

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But the the whole place now is called

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the the village at Grand Traverse Con,

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Grand Traverse Commons

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And, yeah, Kirkbride.

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That's, that's the word I was looking for,

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not Kirkby. Kirkbride.

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And

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that's, there was four of those Kirkbride,

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buildings in Michigan.

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Traverse City was just one of them, but

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but it was the

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actually, I think it's the newest one, and

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I think it's the only one still

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in use.

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Not as a psychiatric

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hospital, but as a,

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you know,

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as anything. You know? I don't know. There

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was I think there was one in Kalamazoo.

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Where yeah. Here. Let me look here. I'm

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kinda flipping through my data sheet here.

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But there was, yeah, there was four of

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them,

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in Michigan,

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and I don't remember.

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I can't find in here where it where

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it says where the other ones are. But

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I know there was one in Kalamazoo.

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I'm guessing there was one somewhere in the

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Detroit area.

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But, again, it's kind of the

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the last of those buildings that's still kind

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of, in its original form.

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They did remodel the main entrance a little

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bit and modernized it a little bit,

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all that. And, you know, I got a,

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a listener. I know

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Chris is probably listening to this with

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in writing notes to, to tell me, how

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wrong I am or to tell me more

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or more information.

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I keep meaning to get him on the

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microphone here to, tell all about the state

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hospital. He was he's, pretty into the history

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of it and does a lot of photography

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around it. They do still give tours

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of,

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the state hospital and, you know, in some

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of the areas that haven't been restored.

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There's

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I guess it's not rumors. There's tunnels that

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kinda go between some of the buildings. And,

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again, you know, when I get Chris on

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here, I'll, I'll let him

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talk about,

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in much more detail,

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but it's a neat old place.

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Used to, for a little while when my

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wife was running a bagel shop, I used

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to deliver bagels over there to a coffee

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shop at the Grotto

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called Cup O Joe. There's a couple of

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local coffee shops called Cup O Joe,

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but, that that's one of them in the

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in the state hospital

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grotto.

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And I used to deliver deliver bagels there

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and always got a cup of coffee because

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they had good coffee.

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And,

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it I'd be there about 05:30 in the

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morning.

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Hey. Gotta get there early.

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But,

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anyway, it's,

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it's it's pretty

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pretty impressive building. As you drive into Traverse

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City, you know, Traverse City is down in

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a bowl,

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and if you're coming in from the South,

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which most people do, they come in

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on M 37

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US 31,

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and as you come over the hill, as

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you start into town,

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if you look a little to your left

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over in the trees, you'll see all the

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spires

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sticking up from Building 50 and other buildings

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around the State Hospital Grounds or Grand Traverse

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Commons.

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Anyway,

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so that gives you kind of a little

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overview. I'll, I'll throw a picture of the

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Building 50 in the in the show notes

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over at mikedell.com.

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And, hey, we got a couple more episodes

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to go.

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Tomorrow,

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I'm gonna talk about why podcasting is so

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special.

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And, then I got a special

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last episode for Napod Pomo coming

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on the thirtieth, which I believe is Sunday.

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So

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catch me tomorrow.