Traverse City Asylum Dairy Farm

nobody@ipernity.com (Revenki) — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 08:57:38 +0000

Revenki has posted:

A closeup from this image, looking north along Brook Drive towards the old dairy farm at the Traverse City State Hospital, in Traverse City, Michigan. (ca. 1965)

The building with the white cupolas just behind the telephone pole on the left is one of the two remaining barns (the one with the pitched rather than ogee roof...that one is just out of frame to the left). The castellated firewall can easily be recognized as the shadow in the middle of the roof. The buildings a bit further to the right are unfamiliar to me - they're not there now, but the picture does remind me that I have always had this vague memory of some other buildings being there that were similar to the remaining pitched-roof barn. The building behind the tree on the left is completely unfamiliar, and appears to be where Engstrom School stood in the 1970s through 1990s.

From what I have read about the history of the complex, they must have been torn down in the early 1970s, probably when I was just old enough to remember seeing them. The flat-roofed garage buildings in this area (if they're still there) could have been the foundations of these missing barns.

The picture has a very strange depth quality to it - the farm buildings are a good quarter of a mile away or more, but look here like they're just at the end of the street.

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Traverse City Asylum Dairy Farm